The Pathway
by Scamasax
Summary: After a darker outcome at Bespin, Luke makes a final bargain. Time travel.
1. A pathway to many abilities

**Chapter 1** \- _A Pathway to many abilities some consider unnatural_ (Supreme Chancellor Palpatine)

* * *

' _Are you sure?' The deep voice asked one final time. 'There will be no going back once this is done.'_

 _"I knew someone who did." Luke cannot stop himself from replying, turning slightly to keep the other in his vision. It was possible to turn back from this road._

 _He had_ _ **seen**_ _it happen._

' _And how is he now?' The voice inquired mercilessly. 'The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be… unnatural.' The figure stopped its pace and tilted it head slightly. Luke could not see its eyes under the heavy hood, but he felt the gaze on his skin as an uncomfortable cold sensation. 'But there is no going back once you start.'_

 _The figure reached out a hand dipped in shadows. Like fog, darkness collected around it and trailed all the way down to the dusty stone floor in a curtain of the darkest black._

' _Do we have a bargain?' The voice finally asked, as the fingers on its out held hand stretched eagerly towards him. Shadows curled around it in a way that reminded him of the last smoke from a burned out fire. Smoke around something that was almost gone._

 _His heart skipped a beat, and his mouth suddenly felt dry. He did not want to do this… but what choice did he have?_

 _This was the only pathway left. His last remaining choice._

 _He had to do this, but still he could not bring the words over his lips._

 _He felt a gentle tug, a pull back to the open door behind him. He wanted nothing more than to obey it. Despite the fact that he knew it would be selfish, and the fact that he knew there was_ _ **nothing**_ _up there he could return to._

 _This was the only way, and the last chance he would get to set things right. In comparison, the price was…_

 _Fair_

 _He took one last shaking breath that unwillingly made his heart skip a beat, and held out his hand._

' _Remember, Jedi,' The voice cautioned mockingly, as its owner's cold fingers closed around Luke's wrist. 'If you tell anyone who you really are, I end this little game, and the price remains the same.'_

* * *

It did not feel like falling back into something that once was. It was nothing as comfortable as that. It felt like stone fingers closing around him and dragging him through a storm of knives. Wind that was not wind ripped against him, and blades of ice dug into his skin.

He was pulled down, not back, and the darkness became deeper and deeper.

It was hard to breathe.

Then it felt like he was thrown. The ground rushed up against him, he heard something crack, a scream, and then everything stilled. The hands were gone, and the wind died.

' _Remember the rules'_. A disembodied voice warned at the back of his mind. ' _You only have one chance.'_

Then he opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed, aside from the stinging smell of burned metal, was another stench; almost like it, that he would recognize anywhere. Blaster fire. The hum of his lightsabre registered a second later, activated on instinct.

The green glow lightened the dark hall he found himself in.

He frowned, and lowered the green beam looking beyond it to the sea of droid parts that laid scattered all over the floor. He had come late to the party it seemed, wherever this place was. He narrowed his eyes over the green blade with an uncomfortable twist in his chest.

He was here.

It had worked.

The lightsaber was brought low to light the nearest parts of mechanics he had only ever heard about in history books, or found in ruins on his many travels.

Almost nothing of this ancient technology had survived to his own time. Even ripped apart before him, he could recognize the design. These were battle droids dating back to the clone wars. Only they all looked new, or had been moments before.

He lifted the saber over his head, casting light upon the ceiling and the many wires above. The engines hummed gently beneath his feet, and little light-bulbs of green and red blinked back to him from the dark above.

He was on a ship, he realized.

Then the ground moved, a rumble echoed all around him. Everything tilted, the parts slid past him on the floor, ramming into the wall in a deadening metallic chorus.

An explosion.

The battle was still ongoing.

He threw a look back into the dark, the meagre light from his saber revealed only a blank and empty room as far as his eyes could see. He turned ahead, to the path littered with broken battle droids and walls blackened with blaster bolts… and burned carved scars that looked like it had been made with something...

Something that could literally cut a path through steel. His eyes widened, then fell on his lightsaber.

 _Of course_.

He took off into the dark, and left the hallway empty. He had to hurry.

There was so little time.

* * *

to be continued


	2. Those who use the dark side

_**Chapter 2 - "Those who use the dark side are also bound to serve it**_ _."_ (Darth Revan)

* * *

' _Are you sure you know what you are asking?' The figure leaned almost casually back against the stone monument, its edges looking sharp as a knife's edge. 'This has never been done before.'_

 _"If you can't do it." Luke snapped, sending the dark figure a glare. "Say so and stop wasting my time."_

 _He knew the agony from what was left of his right hand was making him short tempered but it was difficult, so difficult, to stay composed._

 _The assault of feelings that the figure projected were overwhelming._

 _The anger, the fear and the hate._

 _It felt…_

 _Cold._

' _Oh! Such anger from a Jedi!' A laugh rumbled from the figure. The smile under those yellow eyes was entirely too wide and showed many teeth. 'I did not say I wouldn't do it, but this is a dangerous game.'_

 _The figure pushed away from the monument and closed the distance between them._

 _The cold that had felt like a distant chill, became colder and colder as the figure closed in._

 _Just like last time he faced a Sith._

 _When-_

 _Luke grimaced as the memory returned full force. The memory of the sounds, the horrible smell, the pain, the dark and the terror when she-_

 _No!_

 _Don't think about that now!_

' _What we are about to do.' The figure suddenly explained as it leaned in far too close for comfort. Close enough to make Luke's skin crawl. 'Is the darkest side of the Force. If it is not done_ _ **exactly**_ _right, it means the void for the both of us.' The dark figure narrowed its eyes._

' _I would not even consider it, if not for the prize you are offering.' The figure opened and closed its hands while the silence fell back around them in the enclosed space that had not heard a living voice in an age. 'There are many rules to this and many things that can go wrong.' Then as if compelled by an afterthought, it added._

' _I will survive. At any cost. Will you?'_

* * *

The hall had become completely empty, if not for a few droids in bigger or smaller pieces that were scattered all over the floor. Luke walked faster and faster, but the hall seemed endless.

His hurried footsteps echoed against the walls in the oppressive lifeless darkness. Nothing living had crossed his path yet, not a droid or a humanoid of any shape.

He was alone in the dark

 _'Maybe this is not the past'_ , a treacherous part of his mind added unhelpfully to his unease. _'Maybe this is just some empty underworld._ _Maybe this is not real.'_

Then mercifully, there was an opening in the wall. It revealed another path, a walkway that cut across the one he was in. He walked closer and came to a full stop in front of the wide opening. It resembled a tunnel, the celling was lower, but the light was much brighter than the hall he had woken up in.

The lamps ran in pairs in the ceiling over a floor that was for every third step replaced by a see-through iron grating. He was careful not to get caught in the glow that came up through them when he threw a look back down, but he saw nothing moving beneath.

Still… his cloak dragged after him on the floor as he stepped around the grating, and walked closer to the wall where the grating did not reach.

He wouldn't risk something suddenly coming at him from below.

Then he heard it.

His head snapped up, eyes staring down the pathway. Violent sharp sounds rumbled in the enclosed

space, appearing out of nothing. The sounds of shots fired, and it was very close.

He took off as fast as his feet could carry him. The lights rushed past him. Relief and anxiety warred within him when he sent his force focus ahead, and zeroed in on a blinding force presence up ahead.

It was familiar, but still so very different.

Old Ben.

Only, he didn't feel old, Luke realized without slowing the pace. He had remembered Ben as a bright presence of light and comfort… but it was nothing compared to the strength of the presence he was closing in on.

Ben's signature was nothing next to this younger version of him. Ben had been more broken by what had happened than Luke had ever realized back home in his own time.

Luke's brow furrowed in determination. That future would not come to happen.

Not if his scheme succeeded.

It was only when he saw the flashing of blue, that he felt the other presence. A presence he did not recognize at all, because it had been destroyed around the time he had been born, but Luke knew who it belonged to.

Anakin Skywalker

A man Luke had never met.

Not really.

But he was the man Luke had come this far to save.

* * *

to be continued


	3. If you wish to become

_**Chapter 3 – "If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force."**_ (Chancellor Palpatine )

* * *

 _The stones didn't seem to be really stained by the blood, Luke noted almost absentmindedly. The colour suited the ancient stones a little too much, like the floor had been made to mimic this exact shade of red. He narrowed his eyes at it, needing the distraction from the cold around his wrist and the knife._

 _He resisted clenching his fingers at the sticky feeling of warm liquid slipping between them._

 _'It had already feasted.' The figure explained calmly and cut again. 'That before was just a formality. A precaution.' The hand around Luke's wrist pulled him closer. Compared to those unnaturally cold fingers, the knife's edge felt warm. 'We start on the cloak now and this will be the hardest, no one has ever tried taking a Jedi back through the ages before.'_

 _"I thought you said no one had ever tried doing this before at all." Luke said, and hissed at the pain when the knife's edge bit him again._

 _'You are putting words in my mouth. I did not say no one else had_ _ **tried**_ _, because many have tried before. I said no one had_ _ **done**_ _it. Succeeded' It looked up briefly from its grim work. 'But it is true that no one has ever tried with a Jedi. This is heresy what we are about to do, according to your order.' It lowered the hand and cut once more, deeper but slower, and with greater care._

 _"Why should it complicate matters that I am a Jedi?" Luke asked, equally disgusted and shocked by the precision of those lines. He did not want to know how long it took to get such skill in such a grim craft, or how many people that knife had tasted. "This ritual is designed to take a force user back. What I am should change nothing."_

 _'Yes and no. There is nothing preventing a Jedi from going back, but it does complicate matters." The figure paused in thought and continued after a breath. 'The issue is that only a Sith can perform the ritual, and sustain It.' The figure stroked Luke's shaking wrist gently in mock comfort. It made Luke feel sick. 'And there is only so long that the dark side can directly power someone, without them… turning.'_

 _Luke did not imagine the eager smile that ghosted the figure's lips._

 _"I am stronger than you think." Luke said with a conviction he had not felt for the longest time, and grimaced when the pain returned._

 _'Not that I am one to advocate for the light side, but I do hope so.' The figure said in a voice so calm it was eerie, considering what its hands were doing. 'Because if your signature changes too much, I will no longer be able to hold on to it, and we both know what happens then.'_

 _Luke nodded even if he did not really understand the concept the figure kept repeating. The void. It just sounded like another way to die. Not that he was not afraid of death, but there were worse things than dying._

 _'This ritual can only take one back within their own existence.' The figure continued. 'And_ _ **only**_ _if they are covered by another's force signature the entire time from_ _ **this**_ _time-line. In this case, mine.'_

 _The cold fingers around Luke's wrist tightened to point where it for a moment became more painful than the knife digging back into his flesh. 'My force presence will cover yours and hide it. Everyone you meet will not sense your presence at all, they will only feel mine.'_

 _The smile widened again under those yellow eyes. 'And I am no Jedi.' It paused, letting the words sink in._

 _"…You are telling me." Luke said slowly with his face carefully blank, but his heart beating faster and faster in horror. "That when I go back I will look like-"_

 _'A Sith. Yes.'_

* * *

The flashing of blue against the assault of blaster fire was gone from one moment to the other when the steel doors slammed shut. Luke's heart missed a beat when muted sounds of combat sounded from the inside.

The droids on this side, the big, unfamiliar and hulking things continued shooting a moment longer, as if they had no registered that the targets were out of reach for now.

It was frustratingly confusing trying to make out what had happened on the other side of the door in all that noise, but the two bright spots in the force remained, as far as he could sense, safe and unharmed. The sounds on the other side of the doors stopped, he noted with relief.

Finally, the droids stopped firing at the exact same second, as if compelled by some unspoken command. Still as statues, their aim remained on the door that had been scorched black and dented brutally under the heavy assault.

Somehow the complete silence that descended now was even more deafening.

Luke pressed close up against the wall, shielding his borrowed force presence in case they could somehow feel him. It was unlikely, but he was not about to take anymore stupid chances based only on his instincts. They had been a very poor guide so far.

The lightsaber was at the ready, the green blade was sheathed, but waiting eagerly for the command. It was an eagerness for battle he had never felt before, and words the Sith had told him echoed as a grim reminder in his mind.

 _'There is only so long, that the dark side can directly power someone, without them… turning.'_

An old terror seized his heart, accompanied by the image of a tall dark figure with a sinister flash of red, and he forced himself to put the lightsaber away.

 _No!_

He would not turn

He closed his hands, pressed his fingers hard into his palm to give him another focus as he battled against the cold sensation that was suddenly everywhere. It felt like frost spreading out from his chest. It was a stinging pressing sensation that made it hard to breathe.

It was not supposed to be happening this fast.

He was supposed to have more time than this!

He willed the feeling away. "There is no emotion, there is the Force." He whispered, and slowly, ever so slowly, the coldness bled away.

For now.

The clicking of metal against metal ripped Luke out of his panicked thought. The clicking signalled the droids departure a second before they moved… The same way R2 hummed slightly just before he sped off to somewhere, Luke remembered with a painful ache in his heart.

However, that was the only comparison between the two.

The way these things moved, reminded him of insects. Giant and dangerous insects. Until they snapped closed, transformed into a round shape and sped down the corridor. They practically flew past him close enough had he reached out his hand he could have brushed their hard shells with his fingertips.

The gust of wind in their wake was strong enough to blow a few errant strands of hair away from his face, but he barely noticed.

He followed the three shapes with his eyes all the way down the pathway with his hand hovering over the lightsaber, until the droids finally reached the end, turned the corner and disappeared from his line of sight. Then he turned his attention to the door.

...or what was left of it.

Even parts of the floor had been scorched black by the heat of the lasers. His footprints stood out disturbingly clear as he made his way to the gate his father and Ben had disappeared behind. He knew the hallway was empty, but the clear evidence that Luke had been here made him throw a look over his shoulder. The comforting light suddenly felt too revealing.

Like something was watching him.

Ignoring the prickle at the back of his neck, he kneeled down to the terminal at the side. Hacking it was so easy he for a second wondered if he had messed it up. Nothing had been this easy in the longest time. He had gotten used to everything being insanely hard.

Remember you are from another time. He calmed himself. This might be the best of the best technology right now, but you have gotten used to the ones back home. A lot of technological advancement can happen in twenty years.

The nothingness that met his eyes after the doors slid open was therefore strangely soothing. Difficulty, irritating as it was, also had a calming effect on him if only because it was familiar by now. Ripped out of his own time like this, right now he needed familiar.

The doors had revealed not a nothingness, but an elevator shaft he realized looking into the hollow space.

He leaned in just enough to look down into the open blackness beneath. The hole went further than his eyes could track in the darkness down there. Looking up, the same darkness looked back, but beyond, through the force, he could feel the two Jedi… and another colder one he did not recognize.

Then one of the two bright points in the force was snuffed out, and Luke's heart just about stopped. There was a roaring flash of anger through the force, and not from the cold presence, but from the presence belonging to his father.

This must be the moment, where it all started. When his father had started down the path to the dark side.

This could not happen again!

The elevator beside the empty one yielded even faster than the first one. The doors had barely begun to open before he was inside, pressing the buttons that would take him up to his father. He mentally urged the elevator to move faster, but otherwise his entire focus was on the battle he could sense through the Force. A battle that got more and more violent.

The coldness was almost overwhelming and felt like needles down his lungs even from this distance.

Was he already too late?

When the elevator finally came up to the right level, Luke's patience was at an end. The doors did not move fast enough, so he helped them. The doors crashed up against the walls and Luke flung himself out of the massive hole he ripped through the metal doors. The green lightsaber flashed into existence before his feet hit the ground.

He did not even know where he had ended up on this enormous battleship. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw other elevators to the side, but forgot them as he came into the biggest room he had seen so far in this place.

A gigantic window encompassed the complete far side of the room, giving full view of the battle fought outside and the rest of the room was covered with a grey almost black metal. Before the middle window was a pair of enormous red lamps that resembled trees slightly. Between them rested a large chair with a person was bound to it.

Just in front of it was a sight that made him come to a full stop.

It was his father, holding two lightsaber's to someone's neck. One of them was a friendly blue but the other was the terrifying recognizable red of a Sith. The man kneeling at his feet sat frozen, with what was left of his hands in his lap.

Only the man didn't have hands any more.

Luke's mouth went dry and felt an uncomfortable pain at his right hand, or rather, where it used to be.

This was where it had started.

This was where Anakin's slide into the dark side had truly began.

Luke felt the coldness in his father intensify as it grew stronger with every second. His father's arms tensed, readying for the kill. Anakin was going to do it, Luke realized and his stomach clenched.

Then he moved.

So intent on the kill, Anakin Skywalker did not feel the newcomer rush towards him until the very last second. A flash of surprise echoed in the force so strong it almost made Luke stagger. The blue lightsaber was thrown up in the fastest block that Luke had ever seen.

Luke's ambush would have been stopped, faster than it began

If Anakin had been the target.

The unnamed Sith hit the floor in a boneless heap. The green saber hovered above the man it had just killed. Anakin took a cautious step back, the blue lightsaber lifted between them.

Luke moved his Lightsaber into a controlled fighting pose and tightened his hold around the lightsaber so much his knuckles turned white. He forced himself to look past Anakin and too keep focus on the real target. The man in the chair that suddenly did not look so confident any more.

Darth Sidious.

One down, he thought and shifted the weight of his feet.

One to go.

* * *

To be continued


	4. If you only knew

_**Chapter 4 "If you only knew the power of the dark side!"**_ (Darth Vader)

* * *

 _"The mark_ _ **will**_ _change you." The voice said as the shadows grew deeper. "And not in a way you will like." The figure repeated. "It would be easier for the both of us if you just let me-"_

 _"You think I am that naïve?" Luke snapped. "I will not trust you with that."_

 _"I'll behave, Jedi." The voice reassured calmly, but there was a nasty edge in its eyes. It looked hungry. Eager. "Without it, I am afraid this will hurt. A lot."_

 _"I am not a stranger to pain." Luke said with as much anger as he could afford to feel. The dark memory from that day tried to return to the forefront of his mind, and Luke let it. He needed to remember why he shouldn't feel. "But… not as obsessed with it as you are."_

 _He noticed with a spark of satisfaction that the figure's shoulders tensed and the hands occupied with cleaning the knife suddenly paused._

 _"I was just stating fact." Luke said to the glare beneath the hood._

 _"Pain is important" The anger collected around the voice, but it was muted, like a visible scar that was already a whitened line against the skin. "It is the centre of all things. It makes you aware. Makes you focus." The figure frowned at the Jedi, finally adding with ill-disguised disgust. "Jedi are not accustomed to it. Their distance to all emotion makes them incapable of handling it for long."_

 _"I told you before." Luke says with grim recollection. "I am not a Jedi." if he had been, then things would have gone so very different. If he had been a true Jedi, he would never have needed to step into this dark place, and he would never have had to face the monster in front of him._

 _"Oh but you are." It disagreed. "More so than any other Jedi I ever met." It tilted its head inquisitively. "There is no emotion there is the Force." It recited as if it was reading the words aloud from a book. "That senseless dogma the Jedi always preached. You are the embodiment of those words." It stepped around him, forcing Luke to move to keep it within his vision._

 _"I can sense all living things. A gift, if you will, from the dark side." It explained casually, coming to a stop beside the dead creature lying on the ground. The eyeless serpent that Luke had killed coming in here "A little experiment of mine." The figure picked the creature up "The recreation of something magnificent."_

 _Then Luke realized the creature was not dead yet. It arched up weakly at the touch and tried to press closer. The pathetic mew that came from it caused a painful clench at his heart before he forced it away. The thing had attacked him first, but it was hard to remember as it whimpered when the cold fingers holding it stroked it gently._

 _"I feel more from a life as little as this one than I do from you." The figure explained looking up from the creature in its hands. "I feel nothing at all from you. It feels similar to a wound in the force, simply more contained." it looked down the creature nuzzling into his hands. "It is fascinating."_

 _Then the figure suddenly moved fast, turned and flung the creature into the dark. Luke heard it hit the ground, and whimper in the dark out of sight._

 _Seconds later, that darkness came alive with shrieks of terror._

 _Without realizing it, Luke had reached an arm out to catch the creature. He only barely registered it before cold fingers curled around his arm and turned him away._

 _"Oh I am not upset about you killing it." The figure said pulling Luke with it by the upper-arm. "It was_

 _a crooked little thing, so loyal and needy for affection. It was too weak to last." It brushed its fingers in its cloak as the shrieks became more frantic and growls rose like an unnatural rumble. "It's brothers and sister would have devoured it eventually anyway."_

 _Luke swallowed, clenched the hands tight into fists at his side and struggled not to let the monster beside him see. He felt like throwing up. It took all his willpower not to wrench himself free of the figure's oppressing hand on his arm, and just run._

 _But he couldn't do that._

 _He had to do this_

 _He_ _ **had**_ _to_

 _The macabre chorus faded behind them as they walked through the dark. The air felt colder, the longer they walked. When they finally came to a stop, he could still hear what was happening behind them. He had to struggle not to look back._

 _The figure took a heavy breath in, stood for a moment like it was relishing in the atmosphere of this place, and perhaps it was. Luke had never felt the dark side so keenly anchored to a place. There was little light, so there wasn't much to see, but he had never been so cold before._

 _The monument to the side was just within his vision and he instantly wished it wasn't when he saw the gruesome depiction. Then the figures hand landed on his shoulder as the other gestured in front of them. Luke could not see it from here, but he knew what was hiding in the dark._

 _He had known from the very beginning._

 _He shouldn't feel fear now._

 _Behind him, the shrieks suddenly snapped off. Stopped. The echoes lasted longer, thrown back against the walls fainter and fainter until it faded to nothing. Luke looked back, he couldn't help it, the ripping and tearing in the darkness behind him sounded louder now that the shrieks were gone._

 _"The weak will always be victims. That is the way of the universe." The figure said with little emotion. "The strong take what they want and the weak suffer at their hands."_

 _Its yellow eyes looked down at Luke with an eagerness that made his skin crawl. "It is inevitable."_

* * *

Anakin's eyes flickered from Luke to the dead Sith at his feet. His brow furrowed. The familiar blue lightsaber remained in guard position and the eyes above it narrowed. The red blade in his other hand brought back memories Luke didn't want to think about now.

It was difficult for Luke not be overwhelmed at that sight. He had only ever know his father as a man more machine than human. He had of course known that Anakin had not always looked like that, but knowing was different than staring the proof right in the face.

A heaviness fell on him. It was like watching an old dream come to life. It was almost too much to bear. The man in front of him looked nothing like Vader, didn't move like him either. Vader had had a heavy walk as if every step was a struggle, but the man in front of Luke now moved with ease and the steps were light.

Ben had been right from the beginning. Vader and Anakin were two very different people, and one of them had been dead for years.

But still…

Luke could not stop the longing that always hid in the darker corners of his mind from curling around his heart. He locked his eyes on the person that he had never gotten to know. The connection to the force unfurled slowly, driven by that old ache.

For one golden moment, he saw a strong bright light through the force.

Then agony exploded in his mind.

He twisted back from at the vicious attack that came flooding through the connection. Pain was everywhere within and without all at once. It was worst in his hands. It felt like he had shoved them into boiling water and under the scars there was… something alive twisting and turning under his skin.

He ripped away from the assault and slammed connection violently shut. His hands shook uncontrollably, the breath escaped past his lips in pants and his muscle ached to the point where it bordered on pain.

 _What just happened?!_ Was the only thought that registered through the shock. He had never experienced pain like that, not even when-

"Who are you?"

Luke snapped back into focus. He shoved the shock away forcefully and tightened his hands around the saber to make them stop shaking.

Anakin had leaned back on his heels, the lightsaber falling slightly from the guarded pose, as he looked Luke up and down. Measuring the threat. There was somehow a practised ease to how he did it. Like running into random force users was an everyday affair to him.

Maybe it was in this age.

Luke took a deep breath, steeling himself. _'Concentrate'_. He told himself. _'You can end this right now.'_ His cloak dragged on the steel floor, making a soft sound behind the gentle hum of the lightsaber as Luke stepped to the side. Anakin sensing the change in the atmosphere leaned forward again into his stance. Both lightsaber's one red and one blue lifted into position.

There was a laziness to it though. It somehow appeared sloppy.

Unfocused.

Luke shifted the weight of his feet thoughtfully. ' _He is underestimating me'_ , Luke realized. To be continuously underestimated was a gift in situations like this, but a gift that after countless repetition had become ... irritating.

Looks could be deceiving, as his father would learn.

Luke tensed his shoulders, getting ready. He had always been lacking in physical power partially due to

his height, or rather lack thereof.

He made up for that in speed.

He saw Anakin's eyes widen in surprise, their eyes locked for a second when Luke's green blade rushed at him. Anakin ripped his blades up and blocked at the last second. Luke threw a force blast forward propelling him back out of reach of Anakin's counter attack.

Luke flew several feet back, he saw the room fly past his vision but his feet had barely touched back down on the ground before Anakin had caught up. The strike was so fast Luke only saw it as a blur. The second blow from the red blade Luke would not have seen at all if not for his connection to the force.

He blocked and sidestepped the blow going in for the attack again, keeping up the pressure. The force powered his steps, making him unnaturally fast as he flung around the blue blade coming back. To Anakin it must have looked like Luke simply disappeared, only to reappear behind him.

Anakin threw himself flat to avoid the blade going for his back. He stumbled forward. Luke collected both hands in front of him and threw a force push after his stumbling opponent. He didn't stay long enough to see if he hit his target. Luke turned on the heel and bolted in the other direction, towards his last target.

Towards the monster who had destroyed everything

He saw the glint of yellow in Sidious' eyes, and the sight of purple force lightning coming to life at his fingertips was agonizingly familiar. So was the smell of it.

But this time would be different.

He allowed himself to enjoy the fear that lighted up in the Sith's eyes. Sidious wouldn't be able to call on the lightning in time. By the look of his face, he knew that too.

The blade rushed down.

A shadow moved between them. The stroke for the vulnerable neck was cut short by a blue saber that moved in between them so fast it seemed as though it had appeared out of thin air. The block that met his was so fierce that he stumbled back.

Anakin followed.

This time he wasn't pulling any punches.

It was the single most intimidating duel since Bespin. The blue lightsaber danced around Luke, nicking him when he only barely managed to block in time. The red blade followed like a shadow, forcing Luke on the defensive.

There was no counter-attack that could get past those furiously moving blades, blocking alone was near impossible. Ben had said that Anakin Skywalker had been the best duelist he ever knew, but... reflexes like this were inhuman!

I should have gone for Sidious first.

Horror settled in his heart, when a block came too slow. The red blade rushed for the opening, straight for the heart but stopped at the very last moment when it suddenly couldn't push any further. An invisible force was locking it in place.

The force extended from Luke's lifted hand prevented it from getting any closer.

Luke grit his teeth and pushed back harder, but Anakin wasn't giving an inch. Luke could see the strain caused Anakin's tense arms to shake slightly from keeping up the pressure against that invisible force blocking his path.

But as impossible as it was for Luke to push him back, it was just as impossible for Anakin to break through. Luke curled his fingers slowly, feeling the force close tighter around the blade, but his eyes were on the second blade that was still very much a threat.

But the second strike didn't come. After a moment that seemed to last forever Anakin took a half step back. The blades made a circular motion in Anakin's hands and moved back into the now recognizable stance without removing his attention from Luke. There was a newfound seriousness in his eyes.

Luke had just become a threat.

Luke moved back to, to get his bearings. He swallowed thickly, his heart felt like it had evacuated to somewhere halfway up his throat. He almost died there. If not for that little trick, Yoda taught him so long ago, his father would have killed him.

Anakin knew that too, by the look in his eyes and Luke doubted he would fall for the same trick again.

Then without warning, the blades rushed forward again and Luke struggled to keep up.

This was nowhere near the skill his father had shown when he fought him the first time back on Bespin a lifetime ago. It was the same attack pattern, but this Anakin had not been broken by age or restricted by injuries that forced him to live all his days only through a life-support system.

He was not dueling Vader, Luke thought as he sidestepped a swing that would have taken his arm. He should have realized that already from the precision and speed Anakin had shown in that first block when he thought Luke's blade was going for him.

The only reason Luke was keeping up was because he had fought his father before, knew his movements, his attacks, knew when to block and fall back.

But it wasn't enough.

Anakin looked nowhere near winded, but Luke was struggling to keep up. He threw himself back and barely avoided an impossibly fast strike aimed at his hand.

If it had not been replaced with an artificial hand years ago, he was sure he would have felt the heat of

the blade on his skin. With sickening dread, he realized the truth.

He could not win like this.

The blue and green clashed again in another last minute block. Then there was flash of red at the edge of his vision rushing for his neck. Luke knew he could not stop it this time, he could already feel the burn of the blade against his throat. He flinched expecting the pain.

And nothing.

The red blade had stopped just short of Luke's unprotected neck.

Anakin met his eyes. "Drop it."

Luke hesitated instinctively. He did not want to be defenceless, not in front of this man. He took deep breath in. Clenched his hand at the phantom pain at his wrist.

"I said drop it!" Anakin stepped closer, and blade pulled a little nearer, close enough Luke could feel the heat of it as a painful sting "Now!"

There was a soft metallic sound as the green lightsaber snuffed out in his hand.

Luke reluctantly uncurled his fingers and with a hollow metallic sound the handle of the deactivated lightsaber hit the floor.

* * *

To be continued


	5. War is a hunger

_**Chapter 5 - "War... is a hunger. And there are spirits in the galaxy whose hunger is never satisfied'**_ (Darth Traya)

* * *

 _"When you get there, do not go sightseeing." The voice explained slowly as if to a dim-witted child. "You time is extremely limited."_

 _Luke nodded, but nausea rose in his throat. This was it. There was no going back now._

 _"How long can you hold it?" he asked instead of acknowledging the fear._

 _"I already told you." The voice said and sighed deeply, but because it was pressed through clenched teeth it sounds more like a hiss. "That depends on you." There was a slight pause, a hesitation as brief as a blink of the eye. "I cannot promise that it will be right beside him, but you will land close to him. I advise you to end it as fast as you can." It finished and lifted the hand._

 _The gleam of the knife was too much._

 _"Wait!" He snapped a hand out and locked around the wrist. "How do I know when time is running out?" His heart thundered like he had just run a mile, and skipping every second beat as if it was threatening to give out._

 _The yellow eyes above him were disturbingly calm._

 _"Oh, you will know." The voice said with a hint of grim humour. "What Vader did to you..." The figure tapped lightly at the robotic hand before it peeled Luke's fingers off its wrist one by one. "What_ _ **that**_ _felt like, is_ _ **nothing**_ _compared to what_ _ **will**_ _happen when the connection starts to break."_

 _The figure peeled off the last finger, and lay the robotic hand down beside Luke as if nothing had happened but there was a warning tightening of the fingers around Luke's wrist before the figure pulled back._

 _"You and he are the same." Luke said to delay for just a few more precious moments, and just enough time to strangle the fear. "Why are you doing this? Helping me?"_

 _The seconds moved past in the unbroken silence for so long that Luke started to think that he was not going to get an answer. The presence then moved slowly back narrowing its yellow eyes at him from above the knife._

 _"He and I are nothing alike." It finally said. "And I am not helping you." The deep voice rumbled softly. "I am helping me."_

* * *

When the lightsaber's metal handle hit the floor, the metallic sound carried mercilessly far into the empty room. It shouldn't have sounded that loud was the first thought that registered in Luke's mind. Somehow it sounded like a door slamming shut behind him.

In a way it was.

Anakin's hand lazily reached out and dread clawed at Luke's heart, when his lightsaber seemingly by its own will jumped into Anakin open hand. Suddenly all he could hear was that mocking voice inside his head.

 _'Your time is extremely limited'_

The scars on his arms already burned stronger now in a silent warning. He swallowed thickly, and tried not to look at it, when Anakin clipped his lightsaber to the belt along with the one he took from the dead Sith. The blue saber remained activated in Anakin hands, and kept Luke very still.

The phantom pain in his wrist increased, but he dared not move. He knew from experience not to antagonize his father.

How much time did he even have left?

"That's better." Anakin remarked dryly and Luke wanted nothing more than to punch that mocking smile off his face. Anakin must have seen his frustration, because he quirked an eyebrow and the smile widened.

Anakin took a more relaxed stance, and slowly lowered his guard. As a small mercy Anakin moved the blade back so the heat of it no longer stung the soft skin of Luke's bare throat. But the deadly blade was still humming softly too close from comfort. He eyed the lightsaber at Anakin's belt. He had to get that back.

But how?

"Who are you?" Anakin asked from the other side of the gentle blue light, looking at Luke with the same contempt Leia had reserve solely for Han when they first met. Anakin looked him up and down, with a bored expression.

Luke had the uncomfortable feeling of being judged and found wanting. It wasn't exactly flattering, and to his surprise he could feel his cheeks redden in embarrassment.

"Isn't it customary to introduce yourself first?" He bit back, doing his best to pretend that there wasn't a lightsaber inches from his throat. Through the force he felt Anakin's signature increase and reach carefully for Luke torn shell of a force presence.

The attempt was muted through the 'cloak' that hid his real force signature. The touch was light and cautious, as though Anakin thought if he was careful Luke wouldn't notice the intrusion, but he did. Luke tried not to react to it, but for some reason it called forth the image of cold deadened skin and yellowed teeth.

"You don't know who I am?" Anakin asked almost as if they had met in a more peaceful setting, as Luke felt his presence pull back again, and with it the slight taint discolouring the edges of his father's bright force presence. Because the taint of the dark side was already there, suppressed, but there.

Was it already too late? Or had a part of Vader always been in there somewhere like a dormant nightmare just waiting for the right moment to come out. Luke's heart sank, and there was an aching disappointment to it.

He recognized the same feeling he had gotten on Bespin.

It tasted like defeat.

Vader...Anakin how much were they really the same person? Through all this he had somehow convinced himself that Vader and Anakin were two very different people, but this disturbing switch from one personality to another made him doubt. It was disturbing how complete the shift had been from the murderous rage to the calm appearance of a Jedi knight.

The change had been so instantaneous and so smooth that it seemed practiced. As if he had done it before.

"Anakin Skywalker." The Jedi in front of him introduced, taking Luke's silence for ignorance. "I am surprised you don't know me. I am also called the her-

"Hero without fear." Luke finished for him, with another stinging twist in his chest and added before he could stop himself. "You were supposed to be different."

So very different.

"What? Taller?" The smirk was back, accompanied with a cocky attitude that didn't fit at all with what Luke had imagined his father to be before the fall. Luke turned his head to the crumbled body not so far away from them. The nameless Sith that was missing more limbs than were still attached. Anakin frowned and followed his eyes.

"…Dooku?" He said sounding halfway insulted. " **You** killed him."

"When I kill someone, I don't mutilate them first." Luke replied just above a whisper, feeling more disappointed than he thought he could still feel. His robotic right hand throbbed and he stretched and curled his fingers as a self-reassurance. Apparently the limb-cutting part of his father's personality had been there before Vader.

He wasn't sure what he felt about that.

"Trust me, he had it coming." Anakin said with a ghost of the anger from before and his eyes darkened. "And as for you. Tell me why I shouldn't kill you?" He continued, and the anger staining his force presence with a cold touch grew stronger. "You tried to assassinate the chancellor."

"I thought the Jedi didn't believe in killing their enemies." Luke recited from a text he had read somewhere in the chaos after Bespin. Aside from that sentence the text had been a useless thing. It had been all about ethics with nothing close to resembling combat technique. It had been so void of conflict of any kind that it had been painful to read. "Or does that only count for you when Obi-Wan is looking?" he added.

"So you know him."

"He has a better reputation than you." Luke stared at the place where his old teacher had fallen. Kind, patient and loyal. He mused with a melancholy thought. He was everything you would want in a teacher and a friend…even if he was always a liar

"Liar?" Anakin for the first time looked startled and Luke's heart missed a beat when he understood to his horror that he had spoken the last words aloud. "Who are you?" The lightsaber came close again, too close.

Luke looked back into the waiting eyes of the man he had only ever wanted to save since he learned the truth. There was a painful clench at his heart when he looked into his father's eyes. The taint was already there to, in Anakin's, natural blue.

The yellow.

Vader's yellow.

"Vader." The word escaped Luke unwillingly. Was he already too late? How far could you go down the path of the dark side and still come back whole?

"…Your name is Vader?" Anakin asked.

Hearing that name, spoken by _him_ … Something in Luke snapped.

The force rushed to Luke, and threw outwards. A violent storm erupted out of nothing, rushing to all sides at once. The ground gave and the power of the blast ripped through everything around him.

Anakin threw his saber up in a block. His arms strained under the enormous pressure, but against all odds he held on. Astonishment warred with the fury within Luke at the impossible sight. No one should have been able to block that, no one had ever done before!

But Anakin was not only blocking it, Luke saw his opponent shift his weight and the grip move to another angle. He was going in for the counter attack. Luke couldn't afford to let him. He stretched his connection further into the force to that barrier he never wanted to break.

His hand came up to support the other, feeling the power rising and rising to a breaking point, he met Anakin's eyes for a split second, and unleashed the power. In what happened next, Luke could only describe as what he imagined it must feel like to be the centre of an explosion.

Cracks as wide as his arms tore the floor apart and flung pieces of the bended metal into the air at breakneck speed. A great piece of metal ripped from the floor and thundered against the great glass wall. The ferocity of the storm pulled at him, making him stumble to the side to avoid falling.

He saw his father get slammed back violently by the sudden force, saw Anakin's eyes widen in surprise before the back and his head hammered into the wall with a sickening crack.

And everything was suddenly very still.

In the wreckage of the once pristine room, Luke fixed his eyes on the crumbled form, half expecting him to get up again. Sparks flew from the control station Anakin had rammed into, the small burning lights rained down on the still body. It remained still aside from his chest moving in shallow breathing.

Luke gasped in relief and exhaustion. His lungs were convinced he had just run a mile and air heaved in and out through Luke's clenched teeth. His muscles shook and his lungs burned. For a terrible moment the world blurred out of focus and it finally came back everything was spinning. A clammy hand found his forehead, he closed his eyes breathing in once, twice, and then he forced himself to move.

The first step was a stumble. 'Too much'. He thought, trying to make his steps steadier. He had used too much energy on the wrong target. Still the force was ready when he called it again, pushing his stumbling walk into a sprint.

With a horrible taste at the back of his throat Luke bolted past the fallen Anakin. His eyes fixed ahead and away. His hand swung to the side as he passed, he felt the familiar touch of the lightsaber as it flew back to him and settled in his palm. It was comforting in a way nothing else was these day, just as pleasant as the sound of it coming alive in his hands.

It almost made the sickening taste in his throat disappear and almost made him feel safe.

Almost.

The room blurred around him and his feet moved faster and faster. The lightsaber turned between his fingers, coming forward in his hands to stretch in front of him and leading the mad dash towards the monster that had destroyed everything.

Lightsaber leading, he attacked, but this time Sidious was ready. Both Anakin and Obi-wan were down and out. There was no one still aware that the hidden Sith had to put on a show on for.

Luke heard the cracking of lightning before the purple light stung his eyes. The cracking of the lightning bolted past where he had just been moment before. He kicked out, sending him back and out of its deadly path when another wave shot out scorching the floor black in seconds.

A pillar of lightning tore loose from the Sith's hands and Luke threw the saber left to block it. The

lightning rammed into the saber, the force of it threatened to rip it right out of his hands. It shook and twisted under the assault.

Then finally the roaring lightning died in Sidious hands, and the attack stopped.

"Who are you?" Sidious had risen from the chair. The bindings were gone, and he stared a Luke with all pretences gone. Lightning danced between his fingers, but he did not attack again. Luke didn't move, recognizing it for the wordless threat. "I know everyone in this little game." He said and narrowed his eyes at Luke and then to where Anakin had fallen. "And yet here I am in the dark."

The lightning around his fingers grew to cover his hand and twisted and turned around them like a poorly reined beast. His fingers curled and uncurled around it like the legs of a dying spider.

The question hung unanswered between them and Sidious expression darkened. Luke crooked his head at the man before him, using the break to judge the distance between them. That force lightning was a problem. It was not only impossibly fast but it had a nasty bite to match.

This was the situation he had hoped to avoid. Despite his best efforts there had been no knowledge of Sidious close combat abilities. There had not been a single eye-witness account to be found anywhere in his own time.

Not one.

He did not want to think too much about why that was.

Sidious brow furrowed and he took a step forward in the long robes. It was not ideal wear for close combat, but he did not look worried at all.

"You are going to tell me." He said with the conviction of a man used to getting his way with everything he put his mind to.

Maybe because he was used to it, Luke mused and followed the enemy with his eyes as he began circling him. Sidious had after all been ruling the republic for some time already. Sidious looked smaller than he remembered though, Luke thought to himself as he mimicked Sidious circling path.

The unusually cold air turned his breath white when he breathed out. Something must have broken on the ship, it was so cold now it felt like a thousand needles on his skin.

The Sith moved lightly over the dark metallic floor, seemingly unhindered by the cold, his age or the long thick robes draping all the way down to the ground. The arms held lazily down his side were empty. He had not gone for his lightsaber yet, assuming he had one on him.

Green spun in his vision as Luke moved into another stance. The saber hummed just in front of him. It was the first stance he was ever taught and also the one that he always returned to, it was after all the only technique he was sure he did right.

Sidious eyes widened for the fraction of a breath before his face once again was emotionless.

"Who is your master?" He asked, a split-second after there was a flash of purple and then everything happen very fast.

Sidious moved with insane speed and then it was already too late. The sting of the force lightning was as agonizing as it was familiar. Another bolt of lightning ripped through him. The pain was overwhelming and his muscled twisted so violently out of his control that it felt like they were ripping off his bones.

Something cold hit his cheek, he twisted uncontrollably, and everything burned. His hands open and closed, clawing against the cold thing before Luke recognized what it was through the pain. It was the floor, he realized. He had fallen and somewhere, someone was screaming.

But it was alright.

Luke had trained for this

The force rushed to him though the darkness that had closed in around him. Looking like small stings of pure light the force rushed to him, curled over him, under him and on both sides.

Then the pain was gone

When he opened his eyes, he saw the Sith through a blue blur. His heartbeat thundered in his chest so frantically that he could feel it all the way up his throat and he could hear nothing else but its furious drumming. He gaped, and to his shame he couldn't get up. Not right away.

The coldness of the floor and the air that felt colder than Hoth had that night so long ago. The force shield started to flicker as he gained his feet grasping his lightsaber as he pushed himself up. The barrier was already dying before he stumbled to his feet. The blue shield flickered around him, keeping up for a few more moments, and then the light died.

Sidious yellow eyes greeted him from the darkness on the other side.

"Impressive." Sidious curled his fingers lazily as another stream of lightning was called to his hands. "But I don't have time for this. You cannot be more than an apprentice. Who is your master?" He repeated and the lightning jumped from his hands.

In a flash it was too close, but this time Luke was prepared.

He pulled the force to him, feeling the rush of it as it fell on him like a wave collecting at his hands. The lightning shot towards his heart the purple light bathed everything in its flickering hue and the electric cracking.

It reached his out held hand terrible fast.

And stopped.

In his mind it felt like a warm light caught in his hand, but the pain of it was intense.

"I do not have a master." He said and tightened the grip around the lightning trapped in his hand. The rush of having so much power in his palm was indescribable after so many years of running. He lifted his shaking hand ignoring the lightning biting into every nerve and held out the ensnared Darkside

power in front of him aimed at Sidious. "I am not a slave." He said, enjoying the fear in those yellow eyes and let go.

Suddenly, in that same moment, the entire world tilted and the shot went wide.

Through the force there was a choir of screams, thousands of little light went out and there was a rumble so loud that even from this distance it blasted against his ears. His back slammed against the wall but he barely felt it, he jumped back up to his feet startled.

The entire room had turned almost all the way upside down.

"Chancellor!" Someone shouted from the other side of the room. "The glass!"

Luke turned just to see a battered Obi-Wan run to Sidious who once again looked the picture of innocence. Luke had already moved to intercept, when an ominous sound rose behind him. Obi-wan's words echoed in his mind when he threw a look back and saw what was happening.

The glass barrier that had given a view of the battle taking place just outside was littered with a spider web of cracks. A huge line carved the wall of glass almost in half. At its centre was a large piece of metal. It the very one that Luke's blast had ripped from the floor. A dry hard sound came from the glass wall, and it grew louder as transparent fragments rained down from it.

It was breaking apart.

And there was nothing but empty space on the other side.

* * *

To be continued


	6. Do or do not

_**Chapter 6 – Do or do not. There is not try.**_ (Jedi master Yoda)

* * *

 _Yoda had told him not to go. Yoda had told him to stay because he could not help his friends, and he had listened._

 _"I'm sorry." He said to the body crumbled at his feet. His knees hit the ground as his legs gave under him. With a sob strangled tightly in his throat, he grasped for one of the hands that were so very cold._

 _"Force I am so sorry." His eyes burned, his breath hitched and everything was so quiet now. He rocked back and forth and clenched the hand harder. His breath chocked, his fingers searched to find a pulse he knew wasn't there and his hands just wouldn't stop shaking. "Please wake up."_

 _He shouldn't have listened._

 _"Please Han."_

 _Why had he listened?_

 _"Please."_

* * *

The howl of the void swallowing up what was not bolted to the floor into the next room was so loud it made the metal door protecting Luke from its wrath seem as fragile as paper.

The others had escaped through the elevator. He had seen Obi-wan carrying Anakin over his shoulder and shoving Sidious inside the elevator before the glass gave. Luke had had to go for another way. There was no chance he would have made it to the elevators in time. Luckily there had been another door.

His heartbeat still hadn't calmed down after the close call. A part of him could not blame it. Every second beat felt too heavy and too sharp. It felt like knives in his chest that kept cutting every time he breathed.

Still the failure stung worse.

He did not know where he had ended up on this labyrinth of a ship. He fumbled through the force looking for the signature, but there was nothing but darkness answering the call. The room in front of him was just as dark. The lightsaber's green glow did little to reveal what had been in here save for a desk and a bed in the corner of the room. In all It was of little interest and he had no plans of investigating further.

All that mattered was that bright presence through the force that suddenly broke the darkness again. Confusion and disorientation was the feelings projected from it, before it settled into determination.

So Anakin was conscious again.

 _Damn it._

The wall was cold under his touch when he pressed through the opening to the other room that had all but collapsed. The bright presence glimmered in front of him in the force as he kept moving through the dark. The coldness from before was gone, he noted somewhat absentmindedly. Maybe it had just been an error in the heating system in that particular room.

His eyes caught sparks outside one of the small windows he passed, it gave an incredible view of what was left inside the gigantic room gently floating into open space. His foot dragged on the carpet consisting of some grey material, and he froze for a moment mesmerized by the sight.

It was beautiful in its own way, that destruction, but he had to be more careful from now on. The confusion shouldn't have taken him off guard like that, but it had, and he was left to search the ships many tunnels for the lost target.

He ducked under another broken opening he suspected had not been there a few minutes before. His robotic hand crushed the metal body of the droid on the other side aided by the massive force pressure of his force choke. He didn't turn to look at it when he continued down the hall.

Aside from the unlucky droid the hall was silent. Anakin's force presence was a beacon through the force just a little further…and where Anakin was Sidious would be as well. He knew how single-minded the Sith had been just before the fall of the republic.

But the series of rooms behind him were unexpected; it was too...human for an only droid inhabited ship. He remembered all the little lights that had went out suddenly, silenced in the very moment the explosion had rocked the entire ship.

Perhaps that had been all the life there had been on this ship, because he could fell no more people through the force aside from a handful specks of light at the other end of the ship.

There had been more life in the Sith's tomb.

It was close now, Anakin's presence, though for some reason it had stopped moving. It was close to the other presence that Luke suspected was Obi-wan and a third one that felt more like a void than a being. The anger flared up again.

He had to kill him.

He had to make sure that the future he came from did not happen.

Everything began and ended with Sidious and he was so close now. Anakin's force signature was coming from just around the corner. Leaning against the wall he threw a look down the hall and froze in place as his eyes widened in surprise.

' _That is a lot of droids.'_ Luke thought.

Anakin with one of his companions at each side was marched between the cluster of droids in all shapes and sizes. There was also the particular nasty type that looked like a giant insect. The one that had that inconvenient shield that seemed to deflect even a lightsaber.

The green saber snuffed out before the procession came into view. None of them looked his way when they marched by. They wouldn't have seen anything even if they did. Cloaking himself in the force was a trick he had perfected through the years.

No one noticed the shadow following them, though at one point Luke was sure he saw Sidious look right at him.

The walk was long, and to his surprise none of the three seemed at all worried at being captured. Anakin even smiled at some point. It was disturbing on a personal level, seeing that complete carelessness in the face of such danger. There was nothing funny about being caught by the enemy, he thought and his wrist burned in phantom pain.

Nothing.

The clanking of the many marching steps was so loud he considered not silencing his own steps, but decided against it. He had not come this far to ruin it by taking stupid chances.

The scars though had muted now, numb in a way that made his skin fell dead. He supposed that meant he was safe for now. Of course he could not be sure.

Before long the march slowed into a crawl. The insect-like robots broke off and sped down a corridor to the left. Still, neither Obi-wan nor Anakin made a move to resist their bindings with their now much smaller guard, and when they were ushered through a door they followed quite willingly.

It was a tight fit but Luke slid into the room just before the door closed.

It was a cockpit. With all the little different coloured lights it could be little less. Again he stared at the two Jedi with growing wonder. 'Why are you not doing anything?!'

Then he saw what they were staring at. It looked like a droid, but it had a heartbeat and a presence in the force, a cold presence.

 _'Another Sith?'_

But there was only supposed to be two!

"Ah… the negotiator, general Kenobi." The not-droid spoke. The way its voice sounded, reminded him of Vader. "We have been waiting for you." If a robotic voice could mimic glee, this was what it sounded like. Luke shifted to the side as one of the droid in the guard pushed past the others with a muttered' sorry' and went to its leader.

"That wasn't much of a rescue!" The droid with the heartbeat continued its monologue, snapping a hand forth to the smaller droid and taking something from it hands. Luke recognized it immediately, it had been his for more than three years before he lost it.

Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber.

"And Anakin Skywalker." It continued, ignoring something the smaller droid muttered to itself. The leader closed the distance between them, walking straight past Luke without noticing anything but the captives in front of it. "I was expecting someone with your reputation to be a little…older."

"General Grievous." Anakin replied looked extremely bored. "You are shorter than I expected."

Despite himself and knowing no one could see him Luke still shook his head in disbelief. That was the second time in just as many enemy encounters that Anakin had brought up height. For someone that tall he sure was fixated on it.

Grievous, he now knew what the general was called, just coughed in response. But if eyes could kill…

The annoyance in the general's eyes somehow reminded Luke of aunt Beru for a moment.

"Jedi Scum." The general scoffed and turned away.

"We have a job to do Anakin try not to upset him." Obi-wan commented looking even more bored than Anakin.

There was in response a very familiar beeping, and Luke forgot everything else in the room when his snapped his eyes down to follow the sound.

R2?

He was hit by massive wave of homesickness when he looked down at that familiar friendly form. He had known that R2 would be around somewhere back in this time, but seeing him suddenly like this, how he used to be, alive and well was-

"Your lightsaber's will make a fine addition to my collection." The general said and forced Luke to focus on the present.

"Not this time." Obi-Wan spoke up, finally with some determination in his eyes. "And this time you won't escape."

Before Luke wondered exactly how they would go about that with both of them bound and weaponless, Anakin shouted R2's name.

For lack of better description R2 responded to the command by exploding. Every little trinket he had under his casing activated at the same time including a rather sinister looking electric charge.

Everyone jumped back, everyone but Obi-wan. The lightsaber sped past Luke on its path to its owner and within seconds Obi-wan was free, along with Anakin.

"Crush them!" Grievous ordered behind Luke. "Make them suffer!" The General finished and the tall droids that had been flanking him activated what looked like a poorly constructed copy of a double-bladed lightsaber.

Unseen by all Luke was already moving.

Luke crossed paths with Obi-wan when he moved to pursue the general. Anakin was busy fighting one of the tall droids alone. Before Luke could reach them, the door leading out had opened when two of the smaller droids tried to drag Sidious off to somewhere.

Anakin followed.

In a shift and practiced move it was over. The tall droid lay broken on the floor, with a slash carved all the way through it. The melted metal still smoked when the two smaller droids joined the other on the floor in pieces.

"Stay at your stations!" The general yelled. Anakin turned eyes focused straight ahead into the cockpit. Luke followed the look with his eyes and witness Obi-wan decapitating a droid that kept fighting regardless. Anakin moved into the room, leaving Sidious unguarded.

Luke's heart skipped a beat. No one was watching the Sith. Sidious was alone

This was his chance!

The cloak fell from him the same moment the lightsaber ignited. Right behind Sidious. He hesitated to strike, not liking the idea for cutting someone down from behind, not even him. Thankfully Sidious solved that problem himself when he by some instinct turned on the heel and froze when he saw the lifted green blade.

"Goodbye." Luke said regretting that it would have to be so done so fast. It was more than he deserved. But speaking up had been a mistake. It wasn't the neck his blade tasted when the strike fell. It was a familiar blue blade.

NO!

NOT AGAIN!

"You again!" Anakin roared and all pretences of being bored vanished. "You persistent bastard!" Anakin swore going in for the attack. He hit like a hammer. The blow Luke just barely blocked would have taken his head clear off in one clean strike. He backed up, back into the room, pressured by the strikes raining down him from all sides.

How could someone that strong also move so fast?

"Don't bother with them! Keep the ship in orbit!" The general yelled somewhere, a little too close for comfort. He dodged another strike, tumbling over a console and found himself at the very front of the cockpit.

It was only by sheer luck the green lightsaber intercepted Anakin's lightsaber in time.

"You are not Dooku's apprentice." Anakin's voice rumbled past the interlocked lightsaber's. "Your fighting style is nothing like his." He increased the pressure to the point where Luke's arms started to shake under the immense force "And you killed him in cold blood."

Dooku's apprentice?

Whatever had given him that idea? Luke was just about to deny it when he stopped himself. He might as well go along with that explanation. It was a better one than he could come up with right now, and

Obi-wan was moving in from the side.

He needed a distraction, and he needed it right now!

"The rule of two. One to hold the power and another to crave it." He said, digging up the knowledge of the Sith he had managed to find. That rule had always been there, in every single text. "In the end, the apprentice always kills the master. It is the way of the Sith." Luke added grasping for straws as he saw Anakin's go from enraged to furious, and went for the jugular. "Not the way of the Jedi though, is it?"

And Obi-wan who had already lifted his lightsaber to strike stilled completely.

"Oh, he didn't tell you?" Luke continued pushing out of the block while trying desperately to catch his breath. "While you were out, your little apprentice was about to cut off my master's head." He added with as much venom as he could manage in this stressed situation.

"Ani-" Obi-wan looked nothing short of horrified

"I am a knight now, and it's called padawan. Not apprentice"

Oh.

 _Another word he didn't know._

"Same difference." Luke snapped, even if he in the same second was beset with overwhelming self-doubt. There was another thing he didn't know, basic knowledge that any Jedi should know.

"You lose General Kenobi!" The General suddenly shouted right behind him. Luke turned just to see the imitated double-bladed lightsaber hit the glass, heard it crush. Then the ground disappeared under him and he was torn from the floor and flung into the darkness outside the ship, into open space.

He knew though the fear that he should try to hold his breath, but the panic overruled reason. The force didn't react to his feeble attempts to command it. The control slid between his fingers like he was trying to catch smoke with his bare hands.

He couldn't breathe!

The open space loomed all over. His lungs burned, his eyes felt like they were exploding inside his head and everything was turning dark.

He couldn't _breathe_!

Then he hit something, and hit it hard. But suddenly there was air! Sweet wonderful air! He coughed, gasped and curled up on the cold surface he had landed on. Strands of his damp hair stuck to his face, but he didn't care. All that mattered was that he could breathe again. He heaved air back into his lungs, gulping it down in huge gasps as the world slowly slid back into focus.

Somewhere over him, he heard the sound of an airlock snapping closing, and he tilted his head up and regretted it immediately. General Grievous' yellow eyes were staring down at him. Before he could move Grievous ignited the lightsaber in his hand and the beam stopped just short of Luke's eyes.

Luke had to turn his head away, to protect his eyes, even if that meant exposing the throat. Grievous crooked his head slightly keeping the lightsaber in place as he leaned forward. To his horror Luke saw the general flip the torn garment away from his right arm, revealing what the robe's thick sleeve had been hiding.

"That's some very interesting scars you got there."

* * *

To be continued


	7. I am not afraid

_**Chapter 7 - I'm not afraid to die. I've been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life.**_ (Padmé Amidala)

* * *

 _Luke's smile was thin and painful, like a papercut._

 _"Why I want this particular slave is my issue." He said, and wanted nothing more than strike the disgusting excuse of a creature down where it stood. If the slaver had known that, he would not be smiling so eagerly at the purse in Luke's hand._

 _"Oh, but this one has a reputation." The slaver argued. "I have slaves that far better understand their role. This one always needed…special care."_

 _Unseen by the slaver, the hand at Luke's side closed into a tight fist._

 _"That I believe is my problem." He said fighting to keep balanced through the force, mentally pushing away the coldness that drew closer from all sides. "As I was told, he can no longer fight in the arena. He is of no further value to you."_

 _"Value can be found in many different areas." The man countered. "I have many different customers." The slaver added and leaned back on his heels with a lazy smile playing on his lips, like he was enjoying Luke's discomfort. "But I must say that you do not look like my usual clientele." His eyes slid up and down Luke's frame, the same way a trader would judge the value of a piece of livestock._

 _It made Luke's skin crawl._

 _"So should I take this as your way of saying that you are not intending to sell?" Luke asked, and the force felt colder around him._

 _"I did not say that, I-"_

 _"So get on with it!" He snapped and felt the force tremble with his anger. "You are wasting my time." Some of the intense emotion must have carried, even to the pitiless creature in front of him, because for a moment there was a glimpse of fear in those eyes before the expression became blank and guarded._

 _"This way..." The slaver gestured to the darkened passage behind them, to where the scream had come from earlier._

 _Luke marched past sending tendrils of the force in front of him into the dark and satisfied to find no ambush waiting there. He would rather do without having to use the force for more than subtle manipulation. It always resulted in unwanted attention these days._

 _Someone always noticed._

 _He tensed beneath the hood of the thick robe, when they got further into the passage. The stench of decay was only overshadowed by the sense of despair radiating through the force._

 _"If you are in need of something more than a bodyguard, we have a wider selection that covers almost any taste." The slaver commented in the same moment that the anguish from the cells around them became too hard for Luke to bear and he slammed his connection to the force shut._

 _The doors to each little cell had a small opening that Luke did everything in his power not to look at. This whole place stank of fear, and through one of the doors he just passed, he heard someone crying._

 _A young someone_

 _"You have really let this place go." Luke commented with barely contained fury. He remembered all too clearly a time when he was the one looking out between those bars. He gritted his teeth and forced his eyes ahead._

 _He could not stand to look back into those few brave eyes looking back at him through the dark. It had been a living nightmare here before, but now the place appeared even more sinister in its dilapidated state. He had not thought it possible for this place to get any worse._

 _"You have been here before?" Surprise lit up in the force from him, and Luke sensed the man becoming pensive, likely trying to remember if he had seen Luke before. "…For the market?" He asked and the same time sounded unconvinced of that possibility._

 _"No, I was not here for the market." Luke replied and stepped over a thick chain abandoned in the middle of the passage. The chain stretched into an open cell. Luke's eyes were drawn to the blackness in there as he continued._

 _Luke felt a small tug as his cloak dragged over the chain. It dragged for a moment after him, under his cloak clicking metallically against the stone floor until he took another step and the chain slid free of the cloth and lay still and abandoned behind them._

 _"The arena then?" The man questioned. "I remember. It was quite the sight in its glory days. Grakkus always bragged that there was not a single thing in the galaxy that had not died in his arena." He eyes looked wistful for a moment, and a real smile played at his lips. "…He died the very same place, so I suppose that is true." He added and the smile became wider_

 _"Sound like a charming guy." Luke said and meant not a word of it. In response the man made a snort._

 _"Trust me." The slaver looked down at him with the smile still playing on his lips, but a haunted feeling came from him through the force. It felt like sorrow. "No one will be missing him." He turned back, eyes locked into the dark, and the force around him darkened further._

 _"And that makes you in charge now?" Luke asked, feeling the conflict under the man's cold expression. It was impossible to actually see the emotional turmoil in the slaver that was beaconed from him through the force. Luke could not help to be slightly impressed to see a slaver have his emotions so tightly under control._

 _It was more than he could do himself these days._

 _"Well… in a way." The slaver answered with a crooked smile, and through the force, Luke felt the blackness of sorrow replaced by a blank grey. "After Grakkus, there has been a shift in priorities. After all slaves are worth so much more in trade, than they ever were in the death battles."_

 _For a moment Luke thought he would say something more, but in the end the slaver just shook his head to himself and turned around._

 _"It is this way." He threw over his shoulder and went inside a passage to the right. "But seriously though." He continued. "I imagine you have heard about the slave from his time before the arena. As I was told, it took Boba Fett himself to trap him."_

 _The lighting in the pathway dimmed as they turned another corner, and their steps echoed loudly against the cold stone walls of the corridor._

 _"But his time here has changed him." He said with as much emotion as if he was talking about the weather. "The injuries he has sustained here have almost crippled him, and he reacted very poorly to prolonged isolation. I have another slave that-"_

 _"I understand, but it changes nothing." Luke broke him off. "The Wookie." He added firmly and resisted the urge to pull his cloak tighter around him. He had been colder than this, even before all this happened. The daytime on Tatooine had always been extremely warm and the nights were equally cold, but this was a different kind of cold._

 _Dampness drew into his lungs with each breath and with it the coldness. He didn't know how anyone could endure this for long._

 _"Have it your way." The answer was an overbearing scoff. "But I warn you, it's a waste of credits."_

 _"I'll be the judge of that." Luke replied. His feet almost sped up on their own accord when they turned another corner, because ahead of them, he felt a very familiar presence._

 _It was all he could do not to break into a run._

 _They stopped at a door, made of some blackened material that looked both unbreakable and imposing at the same time. The key was shoved into the lock it took only seconds to twist the key and open the door, but it felt like an age had passed when it finally swung open._

 _Luke didn't know what he had expected what was on the other side when that door opened._

 _But not this._

 _Never this._

 _In a split-second he was kneeling by Chewbacca, all pretences of posing as an indifferent slave buyer were gone as he reached for his friend. The hand that stretched forward trembled._

 _Luke hesitated, the hand paused between them, before it almost by its own accord lowered to Chewbacca's shoulder. The Wookie had always been twice his height just as he was now, but he seemed diminished and though the force there was… a hollow._

 _Chewbacca was breathing, but he wasn't moving._

 _Luke's hand connected gently on the broad shoulder. The strands of hair in the fur were sticking together, it felt rough on his fingers where it used to be almost soft, and beneath the fur, Chewbacca's shoulder felt even colder than the room._

 _"Chewie?" Luke asked, and his voice broke. His heart felt like it had stopped, when Chewbacca finally started to move for the first time since Luke entered the room. He lifted his head in short little movements that looked almost mechanical, and when Chewbacca revealed his face Luke felt sick to the core._

 _His friends face was disfigured. There were so many scars and the fur hand been burned off in patches, as if he had walked through fire. The smell of ash still clung to him, even if it was faint._

 _Worst of all were the unblinking eyes staring blindly at nothing. Chewbacca´s eyes were fixed somewhere over Luke's shoulder on the blank wall behind him._

 _"Chewbacca it is me. It's Luke." He tried again, softer this time, in a whisper. "Please look at me."_

 _Chewbacca kept his eyes fixed on the wall._

 _He did not move again_

* * *

"I know for a fact you are lying, little Jedi or whatever you are." Grievous said, and the blue lightsaber in the general's grip hummed ominously close to Luke's neck. The yellow bloodshot eyes looking down on him did so with surprising intelligence for something built like a destroyer. "It is true that Dooku took another apprentice after Ventress but-."

A nasty dry cough cut the sentence off. It racked the entire body and when Grievous once again could breathe, it sounded dry and painful. The free hand clutched over the heart for a few more moments before the breathing evened out again.

"I know that because _**I**_ am his apprentice." There was a small pause and the eyes over him narrowed into slits. "Which leaves the question of, how you got here, and who you are working for?"

"Why do you think that I work for anyone?" Luke asked, pressing further back against the floor to escape the blade that pulled just a little closer. Above, Grievous did not dignify the question with an answer.

"Is it Maul?" He asked instead, crooking his head just a fraction to the side. "I have suspected for a long time that he is still around somewhere!" There was special venom in those words, and through the force there was only one emotion. Hate. "No…" He added finally after a long pause. "He does not have the skill for this"

"I do not work for anyone." Luke insisted. Grievous only stared back down at him with a blank expression. Then the general moved. A sharp sting crawled into his shoulder in a flash and made him snap a hissing breath in.

The saber had stopped just short of connecting to his shoulder, but only just, and from that close proximity the pain was extreme.

"So you carved that on you own arm?" The General asked with a nod to the carvings. "They do not look like they were made for decoration." The blade descended again and agony exploded in Luke's shoulder. The air smelled like burned flesh in an instant.

It was only by sheer force of will that he did not scream.

"Skywalker called you Vader, but that is not your name is it?" Grievous asked horrifyingly calm and he kept up the pressure. A numb pain registered in his other shoulder when the claws of Grievous' hand dug through the skin. "I know what people look like when they lie." His voice sounded strained from the coughing, but his hands were steady when he pushed the blade down.

"St- stop!" The words were ripped out between Luke's clenched teeth as he tried to twist away from the burning blade. He couldn't tell! He couldn't. If he told anyone who he was, he would break the bargain and then all of this would have been for nothing!

The pain increased.

Though the agony the force called to him and Luke grasped for it like a drowning man. Lightning

jumped from his fingers in an uncontrolled storm what flung outward in all directions. If Grievous had not been this close Luke would have hit nothing.

Lightning exploded outward and died in an instant, but the force of it sent Grievous airborne. From the odd angle on the floor he did not see the moment when Grievous hit the wall, but he heard the impact.

Blackness fell all around him.

"I am not telling you anything!" He yelled between clenched teeth. He pushed back against the floor with shaking hands, stumbled to his feet and threw himself backwards so fast he only discovered that he couldn't get any further when the cold metal wall hit his back.

He narrowed his eyes through the dark. He could feel Grievous through the force, but he could see nothing through the blackness. He gasped, at sudden pain and grasped for the shoulder. A relieved breath escaped him. The wound was painful, but it was superficial. He could still fight.

He straightened and heard a crushing sound under his boot. Glass covered the floor, the same transparent glass that had covered all the lamps in the celling.

"Bold statement." Grievous voice rumbled from the dark. Luke heard a loud noise followed by the heavy stomps of robotic feet. "But I know someone who is very good at asking questions." He coughed heavily. "He is even better at getting them answered."

The lightsaber in his hand activated as if to emphasize the threat in those words. The red blade gave off a most sinister light in the hall where all other lights had gone out. Somehow it made the shadows seem darker.

"You have no reason to do this. You are not the one I am after." Luke lifted his empty hands, and felt the force gather around him. In seconds, an unseen a shield was woven tightly in front of him, between the armed droid general and himself.

It was an explosive display of force power. Anyone with even a flicker of force sensitivity would have felt it, but Grievous did not even blink.

 _'A pretender then.'_ Luke mused and eyed the fallen Sith's lightsaber in the right hand of that mountain of a droid. The way he wielded it was with a familiarity that Luke could not help but to envy. _'A pretender who knows lightsaber combat.'_ He pulled the force tighter around him.

"We will see" The red blade lowered down into battle position "I think Sidious would like to ask you personally." Grievous' claws of his left hand dug into the opening of the side chamber that he had been thrown into in the blast. It left deep scars in the metal when they withdrew with a metallic sharp noise.

The lighting was poor, but the room behind his enemy was very small, just big enough to stand up in. Grievous moved another step closer and as a consequence revealed more of the room from behind his bulk. Luke's eyes widen in surprise when he recognized the design.

It was an escape pod.

Grievous took another step into the hall, closing the distance. His shoulder moved up slightly, and the grip on the saber changed. He was moving into battle position. Just when Luke thought he was going to strike, the general suddenly snapped his head to the right.

A sense of danger screamed at Luke through the force, and then everything moved. The hall bolted past him as he was thrown violently to the side. When he hit the ground it is shaking and twisting under him like a wounded beast.

A siren howled through the ship out of nothing. Then the ship started to tilt. The metal floor slid away under him as he the floor tilted too much for him to hold on.

He grabbed for an edge, anything to hold on to as he descended into the dark. He threw a look over his shoulder. There was nothing but darkness beneath. It was a great black pit. He didn't know how long the hallway was. If the drop was too long it would kill him.

He clawed at the ground, kicked out with his feet, but it did not eve slow his fall. With his heart raising a sudden idea came to him. Before the ground turned completely, he raised his robotic arm and slammed it clean through the upper layer and held on, and not a moment too soon.

The ground disappeared under him, and his feet dangled over drop. The hallway was not to each side anymore, but above and below him.

He hung on, dangling over the emptiness beneath. He gasped, looking up for the enemy that had not passed him when the ship went upside down. As above so below. There was nothing but darkness looking back at him.

He clenched his grip on when his eyes suddenly locked on something right outside a window in the side of the ships wall. A part of the ship floated past at break neck speed.

A big part.

It looked like half the ship had just broken off!

"Time to abandon ship." Grievous voice sounded from just above him. Luke stretched his head back upwards and turns just in time to see a door slam shut. A second later through the window Luke saw the escape pod speed off into open space.

Then it was followed by all the others.

He hung on a moment completely frozen, startled into shock and saw the little red lights of the escape pods disappear out of view. Grievous had activated all the escapes pods, he realizes with horror. There was no way off now.

As a macabre answer to his panicked thought, the ship rocked violently. ' _This is it,'_ Luke thought. He could see just enough out the window that with the ships current path it was going to hit the atmosphere with its side. The impact would rip the ship apart.

He knew what ships looked like just before they crashed.

The ship twisted under him once more, and then somehow, impossibly, the ship started to turn back on the right course. Slowly ever so slowly, the hall evened out, and Luke fund himself flat on his stomach gasping for breath.

His heart beat frantically halfway up his throat. His hands push back against the floor and he is back on his feet in an instant, and he cannot understand how it happened until the ship moved again. It moved slowly changing course in a move that was to smooth for a thing that enormous and that broken.

Someone was still trying to land this thing.

* * *

The halls were abandoned on his path back up to the very front of the ship. The only things that disturb his furious run were the toppled furniture and the parts of destroyed droids that lay abandoned everywhere.

The lightsaber Grievous had dropped was clutched tightly in his own hand regardless.

The halls sped past him as he ran. The Force pushed at his back, and made his steps longer and faster. The pace was way beyond anyone not aided by the force or technology. It was a foolish move to make on a ship that might have enemies around every corner, but he did not have the luxury to be careful.

The distance was long though, and when he finally reached the cockpit the ship was just about to enter the atmosphere.

"Open all hatched extend all flaps." His father's voice sounded from the far front of the cockpit. Luke took another step into the room and the signatures he had been following here now came into view.

Anakin cursed at no one and moved his hands to the steering controls. Anakin fingers were everywhere on the control panel, no doubt doing what he could to keep the ship on course.

He was likely the only reason why they were not dead yet.

Obi-wan stood just behind him, supporting himself against a control panel that was throwing yellow sparks into the room. At the back, closest to the door stood Sidious with his back turned, alone.

This time Luke did not feel any regret, when the red lightsaber came to life in his hands. Luke felt a flicker of disgust when he saw the colour of the lightsaber Grievous had dropped. Worse was another feeling, a pull at his arms where the scars were.

Was it just phantom pain again? Or was it the sign that time was running out?

At the sound of his blade all of the three in the room turned to him. He tightens his grip on the saber and focuses on Obi-wan. Anakin would be out of commission when he had to pilot the-

He throws his saber up in a guard just in time to stop the blue lightsaber from biting into his neck. The eyes that stares back at him through the blue glow is not Obi-wan, but Anakin. He gasped at the same time Obi-wan shouted Anakin's name and the ground started to shake.

No one was controlling he ship.

"Out of my way!" Luke roared. The lightsaber clashed with another, once again blocked from its target. It was infuriating. A sidestep was once again caught, and frustration got the better of him. He threw his body weight forward trying to break the block with sheer force.

He might as well have tried to move a mountain.

Anakin was not giving any ground.

"Anakin I need you here!" Obi-wan shouted from the controls, Luke didn't have to look to know how fast the ship was spinning out of control. He could feel the immense pressure pushing him to the side, the howling sirens drowning out almost all other noises and the ship moved like a stormy sea under him.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Obi-Wan frantically trying to work the controls, somehow managing to pull the ship back up from its spin, but not completely. They were nearing the atmosphere at a wrong angle. Without Anakin at the controls, Obi-wan could not keep the ship on the right course on his own.

Luke narrowed his eyes at it, but he could not afford to pull back now.

He had not come this far to fail when he was this close! He reached forward and saw the shock in Anakin's eyes when Luke's free hand closed around Anakin's wrist and pulled. Anakin moved with it. Forced out of balance he just barely threw himself back in between Luke and the monster that would destroy everything.

It was sickening, that desperate attempt to protect something so ugly.

"Listen to me!" Anakin suddenly yelled blocking another furious attack. "If I do not take control of this ship right now, we all die!"

The red lightsaber remained lifted but Luke hesitated. Then, behind Anakin, he caught sight of Sidious staring back at him over Anakin's shoulder. That calculating look was all it took for Luke to steel himself. So many horrors had happened because of that Sith. He needed to die.

Luke lowered the blade back into attack position and called to the force.

"I am not afraid to die." He said and purple lightning flickered into life in his hand.

* * *

To be continued


	8. Dangerous and disturbing

_**Chapter 8 – "Dangerous and disturbing this puzzle is"**_ (Jedi Master Yoda)

 _"I have always valued power greatly. The Sith replied with poorly disguised superiority. "It is with power you shall win this, if you can." The stones beneath the figure darkened as it moved in front of the only light coming from the door._

 _Luke could not stop his eyes from sliding over to the ghost of a light coming through it. Anywhere else, someone might have called the light a shadow, so little it was. The figure followed Luke's quick look at the exit. Luke did not think he imagined the small smirk at the corner of its lips before it was gone, but there was no trace of it in the figure's voice when it spoke again._

 _"You cannot tell anyone of this future." It said with a finality that left little room for argument. The yellow eyes dared Luke to challenge it, and Luke was not about to disappoint._

 _"And what's to stop me?" Luke said, and his sharp tone turned the question into a dare. "If you break the contact early it will have consequences for you as well. I will make sure of that." He allowed the threat to linger between them for a long moment, and finally added. "Mark my words."_

 _Luke would be lying to himself if he did not feel a small measure of enjoyment at the way the Sith's posture suddenly stiffened, even if the room suddenly felt colder._

 _Luke walked closer to the figure and blocked its line of sight to the door. With his back to the door, his shadow fell forward towards the Sith, as the light behind him pushed it into the dark._

 _"You threats are as empty as this tomb." Luke continued, watching the anger in the figure's eyes burn at his insolence. Clearly it was not used to being challenged. "As soon as I go back, I will be out of your reach. You and I both know that-"_

 _"Do not presume_ _ **Jedi**_ _." It snapped. The last word was spat out as if it was a curse. "I have power you cannot imagine, not even in the void would you be out of my reach." The yellow eyes tilted lazily down to look at him. The voice was confident and condescending as it continued. "Remember who you are talking to."_

 _The malice in them was unlike any Luke had ever seen, but the words didn't fool him for on moment. He had come a long way since his sheltered life at Tatooine. He knew a lot about lies now._

… _And liars._

 _"Why does it matter to you how he dies?" Luke stretched out tendrils of the force from himself and out towards the Sith. He tried to find just some small measure of reason behind this senseless rule but all that met his searching senses was the cold constant anger the Sith wore like a second skin. "The whole point of this is killing him!"_

 _At this outburst the figure paused and Luke felt a ghost of confusion under the permanent anger. Luke didn't know how to react. It was the first time the Sith had shown any emotion other than different stages of anger or pain_

 _He kept his face carefully blank, and waited for the Sith to speak._

 _"I am many things but I'm not a traitor to my principles." The Sith finally said in a low voice. "If he cannot defeat you, then he is unworthy to be Sith, and deserves to die." The figure stepped forward and stopped. It stood just outside the reach of the light coming through the door and the darkness of the tomb surrounded it like a macabre aura._

 _"But you will not have him defeated simply because you turn the entire Jedi order on him." it said and the darkness seemed deeper than before. Luke knew the figure was a shadow of its former self, but old power still lingered dormant around it. Like an old predator with sharp claws and blunted teeth._

 _"And who is going to stop me?" Luke spat back regardless of the unease clawing at his back._

 _The answer was not the familiar anger, but a smile._

 _"You don't seem to understand, so allow me to make it very clear." The Sith said, and towered over him in a wordless threat. It stepped around him slowly, lazily, but its yellow narrowed eyes never left Luke and he was force to turn around to keep it within his vision._

 _"Breathe a word of this future to anyone, and I will end the ritual immediately." It said and stopped just in front of the door and blocked the light with its massive form. "…Regardless of the consequences."_

* * *

"Would you just listen to me!" Anakin threw his arms up into another block. The red saber hissed as it slammed against the blue blade. "I need to pilot this scrapheap right now or we all die!"

"Then go." Luke replied mercilessly. The red saber danced around the blue one again in a flash of movement. Always the blue lightsaber blocked its path, but the opening Luke was waiting for would come.

He knew it would.

Anakin would slip any moment now.

Lightning blasted out from his outstretched fingers in a roaring storm, and jumped straight for the target. A brilliant flash of blue rushed in the way of the blast. It was like the lightning had slammed straight into a wall. Purple lightning crashed against an invisible force and exploded out into the rest of the room.

A pillar of electricity went wide and crushed into the console right beside Luke. He threw himself to the side and pulled a force shield around him. The console exploded with a deafening roar of fire, a hailstorm of sharp metal pieces were flung out from it and slammed into his shield.

It sounded like thunder when the shards struck out in all directions and crashed into the floor and the walls.

They did not only cover the floor, the force of the explosion had been so violent that the sharp edges had cut right into the metallic floor. The floor was torn open and the pointed edges stuck out, reaching for the celling.

It spread almost all the way to the front of the cockpit where Obi-Wan was frantically trying to fly the ship. The shards reflected the red flashing light brightly, and in contrast their long shadows were ominously black.

It looked like a sea of teeth.

A flash of blue rushed for him. Luke released a harsh breath and struck forward at the same time he jumped back. The lightsaber in his hand hummed as he threw it up in a block, seconds before Anakin's saber collided with his.

Luke gasped through clenched teeth and his arms shook under the insane strength of the attack. His arms could not help but to give under the pressure as the blue lightsaber rose and dove again with strikes so powerful and so fast that Luke was forced back under the assault.

Anakin was wielding the lightsaber like it was a hammer.

Luke stepped around the second strike. The blow that went flying past him was so powerful that he felt a gust of wind from it against the soft skin of his neck. The smoke from the exploded console parted before the saber as it retreated away and was cut through again when the blue blade rushed forth again.

The lamps above and around them had turned from yellow to a blaring red. It was ideal for Luke, the red saber was almost impossible to follow in red light from the flashing lamps. Anakin's blue lightsaber on the other hand was the only thing that broke that sea of red.

In these conditions it should have been easy to fight past Anakin

It wasn't.

Luke moved his lightsaber into another fighting form, and turned from defender to attacker. He threw a bolt of lightning from his hands as a distraction and stabbed at his father's left side. The lightsaber's deadly bite met yet another block.

He increased the pace. Time was running out. Through the window the impressive view of an endless sky of stars had turned into a hellish red.

The ship was going to hit the atmosphere any moment now.

The red saber swung back and around. Luke shifted the weight off his feet and hurled a blast of force lightning towards Anakin. The Jedi tripped, and his back slammed against a toppled console. He threw an arm hastily out and managed to steady himself with it, but not before Luke had bolted past him.

A warning screamed through the force, and Luke acted on instinct and swung back around. The blue lightsaber jumped through the smoke and Luke had already raised his stolen lightsaber to meet it, when his eyes widened in shock.

Anakin wasn't there. The lightsaber had been thrown.

He felt Anakin's presence before he saw it and then it was already too late. An insane pressure crushed down on him from all sides, and he couldn't breathe. His arms refused to obey his furious command to move. To do something!

Anything!

His heart hammered in his chest, and horror and panic drowned out anything else when he realized that he couldn't move anything at all. The control of his own body had been ripped out of his hands!

In slow motion the blue lightsaber sped past him and fell into an outreached hand. The world blurred, and a sharp pain ripped through his knees.

Even as his world blurred in and out of focus, he saw enough to realize that he had fallen on his knees. Everything appeared to him as if he saw it through a thick fog, and he couldn't hear anything. The world had gone completely silent, the sirens had muted, and the world seemed far away.

By some inexplicable urge he focused on his limp hands lying lifeless on the floor at his side. He could no longer feel them, but his fingers curled up on their own will in short twisting movements. In the red flashing light, it reminded him of the way leaves curl up when they burn.

It was only when the glowing blue lightsaber rose over him like an executioner's axe that his mind jumped back into action. He could not move anything, but he did not need to with the force as his ally.

A thin line formed just above his head in a second, before it spread out into a shield. The shield had barely formed before it violently flung upward. The shield became a wall, and Anakin's saber crashed into it.

Through the force it looked like a blinding explosion of sparks when the saber and the barrier collided. In the same moment Luke threw himself up, and towards his adversary. The stolen red lightsaber flew back into his hands.

In a furious series of movement the red and blue slammed together in ever shifting patterns. Luke stabbed the lightsaber forward, striking faster and faster, but he couldn't break through.

A look darted to the side, outside the window, and his heart missed a beat.

Time was running out.

He bit his lip nervously as he saw how dangerously close the ship was to impact. Anakin would not risk the entire ship for Sidious. Any second now Anakin would run for the ship's controls and leave him to his fate.

Anakin would not let all of them die just so he could protect a Sith!

… _Right?_

But Anakin did not move.

"Are you actually going die for him?" Luke asked despite himself. He was closer to horror than surprise as the ship twisted under his feet again. It was worse this time, and somewhere he heard a rumble. It sounded like an explosion.

"His fate will be same as ours." Anakin said with conviction that chilled Luke to the core.

Anakin was ready to die for this monster!

"He would not do this for you!" Luke spat back, helplessness curling in his gut. He could not get past Anakin like this, and if it did not happen now he would not be able to get the ship under control before impact.

… And then they all died.

With a heavy breath he forced his arm down out of the block. The lightsaber went out like a candle, and the defeat felt familiar when relief washed over Anakin's tense expression.

"Go." Luke said, and nothing more.

He could not bear it.

Obi-Wan jumped out of his seat before Anakin started moving and walked in between Luke and Sidious. Sidious moved quickly further behind Obi-Wan and his deceptively yellow-less eyes watching Luke. Then Obi-Wan and Sidious drew back toward the very front of the cockpit where Anakin was already in the pilot seat. Luke was left alone in the middle of the room.

A shower of fire rushed past them outside, and bathed in that light stood those three. Anakin and Obi-Wan were caught in the flickering light, but Sidious hiding behind Obi-Wan was little more than a formless Shadow. The red light touched Luke's face without warmth, and he felt cold everywhere.

Anakin frantically pushed just about every button on the control panel without any visible effect. The ship kept the insane speed, and the violent twists that rocked the entire ship did not become smaller. Instead they got steadily worse. Dread started to grow within Luke when Obi-Wan started to look worried as well.

' _Had it been too long?'_ Luke thought, and shifted his eyes from Anakin to Obi-Wan. ' _Had he doomed them?'_

Obi-Wan didn't move from his spot beside Anakin, and he did not even glance in the direction of the empty seat of the co-pilot. Luke looked to it and back to Obi-Wan and didn't understand. His old teacher was not a bad pilot, so why wasn't he helping Anakin to-

He drew a glance to his old teacher and almost startled at the pair of intent eyes looking back at him. Luke realized his mistake and steeled himself. Of course Obi-Wan weren't helping; he was too busy standing in between Luke and Sidious to help Anakin.

Luke's cloak dragged after him on the floor as he stepped closer. He kept his movements slow, despite the urgency, as he closed the distance between himself and Obi-Wan. Carefully, he made a show of holding his open palms outward and away from the lightsaber in his belt.

He could summon the saber to his hand in a breath should Obi-Wan try anything, but the passive gesture made Obi-Wan pause his hand over his own lightsaber.

"Let me pass." Luke ordered his old teacher when he got close enough. He avoided looking directly at him and instead looked past him. There was a sudden uncontrollable ache in his heart when he saw Obi-Wan this close. He looked so young.

So unbroken.

Luke hid the sudden rush of emotion under a front of irritation that made the emotion easier to stomach. "He cannot land this thing alone." He reasoned. By the look on his face, Obi-Wan had already realized as much, but Obi-Wan still hesitated as the thousand fires outside became a deeper red.

"I am not about to let you-."

"- If we crash I die too." Luke snapped back, and threw another look at the flames licking up against the windows. Whatever patience he had left was hanging by a thread. "Let me pass!" he repeated and this time, unwillingly, a little force persuasion echoed beneath his words.

He had gotten to depend on it so much that it just slipped through like the habit it had become.

Force persuasion was a subtle technique, and it was extremely hard to notice through the force, even for an experience force user. In a future with so few force sensitives it had been one of the only trick's he could use almost constantly when he needed too.

But he had never used it on a Jedi before, simply for the reason that there had been no other Jedi in his own time. Luke realized the mistake the second the command rushed past his lips, but by then it was too late.

Obi-Wan flinched back for the fraction of a second, then the connection Luke had opened to him was torn to pieces and Obi-Wan's eyes snapped open. His shoulders tensed up and the eyes narrowed. The intensity of the glare from his old teacher made Luke feel very small.

Obi-Wan shifted forward on his feet and stepped forward ever so slowly. Every movement appeared practiced, tense and his hand curled around the hilt of the lightsaber in his belt. The flicking shadows in the faded emergency light fell heavily around his old teacher. He looked ready to move at the smallest threat.

Obi-Wan had never appeared so sinister in all Luke's memories of him.

Using force persuasion had been a mistake.

"He cannot land the ship without me." Luke tried as a last effort. He let the truth of it shine though the force. "I will get us all safely to the ground, I swear on the force."

An eternity passed between them. Obi-Wan stood unmoving for so long that Luke at the end didn't think he was going to let him pass.

Then, without removing his hand from the lightsaber, Obi-Wan gestured to the seat while he kept himself firmly planted between Luke and Sidious. Luke stepped past, and almost stumbled, his foot slipped on the ground when the ship twisted and he fell up against a console.

Luke could practically feel Obi-Wan's burning stare following him. He tried to disguise his discomfort by moving faster than he normally would and made his way to the pilot seat in record time. Throwing himself into the abandoned seat, his eyes skittered over the control panel.

It was outdated, roughly designed and complicated at a first glance. But he recognized the main controls. It was an old system that was only still used on backwater planets like Tatooine in his future. He scoffed inwardly.

If anyone had told him that he would once be grateful for growing up on that dust ball he would have laughed in their face.

The thought had barely registered before all the lights suddenly went off.

A gigantic crash ripped through the ship. The lights blinked back into life but went from red to yellow and the sirens that howled through the ship snapped on and off every few seconds. Out of the corner of his eyes, through a window that was holding on due some kind of miracle, a part of the ship floated past at an incredible speed.

A big part.

Clicking sounds from his right barely rose over the intense noise, but it was enough to make Luke flick a look over to see Anakin's fingers dancing over the many buttons on the control panel, but his hands never went anywhere near the main controls. Luke was flying this thing alone.

"What are you doing?" He yelled, fighting against the violent twists of the ship and struggled to keep it on course. "That is not helping!" The words were practically hissed through his teeth that were clenched so tightly together that his jaw ached.

Then suddenly, from one moment to the other, the ship became less intense and easier to handle.

How? He snapped a look over to his co-pilot.

"You are welcome." Anakin raised an eyebrow, a smirk played at his lips and he moved his hands back to the main controls.

 _'Smug bastard'_ Luke thought, and was about to say as much when the atmosphere suddenly was very close.

"Hold tight!" Anakin shouted, and a second later all he could see was fire. Flames licked against the windscreen in an endless inferno even fiercer than before. The yellow light of the blinking lamps flashed faster and faster until they with a cracking noise went out all at once.

Hitting the atmosphere was like hitting a wall at high speed, the ship jumped under them, so violently that Luke was airborne for the fraction of a moment. One hand came loose from the desperate hold on the controls and anchored on the seat keeping him from sliding off.

Within the span of a second he ripped the hand back to the controls beside its brother. It was all he could do to keep the ship on course, as they speared though the clouds and the ground rushed up against them.

It wasn't a landing.

It was a controlled crash.

The ground ripped apart beneath them, flinging concrete and dirt meters into the sky. The ship groaned like a wounded beast and twisted under them. Sparks flew around them contributing to the chaotic input of noise and flashing lights.

Finally the world stopped moving and shapeless blur of the world around them became buildings under a clouded sky. His fingers uncurled like a spider and came loose from the controls. The first thing that registered as Luke's heart desperately tried to calm down after the insane landing was Anakin laughing.

High on adrenalin Anakin smiled at his mentor and said something that Luke didn't quite catch. None of them looked at him. Not even Sidious seemed to remember he was there as he was steadying himself against the wall. Luke, and the threat he was, had in the intenseness of the moment been forgotten.

It was a chance he couldn't afford to miss.

Luke had just closed his hand around the lightsaber when he saw Anakin throw a look out though the broken window that had smashed on impact and wave at someone on the other side. Luke's saber remained deactivated as he caught a glimpse of the familiar brown Jedi robe outside.

And not just **one**.

Obi-Wan rose to his feet from where he had fallen on the floor, Luke had not even noticed him fall. There was no way to get at Sidious without alerting Obi-Wan. He hesitated. Sidious was just there, but he might as well have been on the other side of the planet with the guard created by those two.

Luke was proud of the abilities he managed to gain through years of searching old scrolls and holocrons, but he did not think for a moment that he could take on Anakin and Obi-Wan at the same time. They had been trained their entire lives by real Jedi instructors. Luke himself barely had three months put together.

No, he thought and started stepping back and away from the three others in the room. The bitterness that rose in his throat was hard to swallow, but he was outmatched. If he fought them now, he would not win.

This battle was lost

To the background noise of Anakin laughing mildly and Obi-Wan calling out a name Luke did not recognize, he pulled away. Neither noticed Luke slipping out of his seat, and no one noticed his light steps as he half crawled towards the door to keep out of sight.

When Anakin with a gasp suddenly remembered the fourth passenger on the ship and turned around to face him Luke was long gone.

Unseen by the people rushing to the crash site, a shadowed figure disappeared into Coruscant's underworld.

* * *

The door slid open and three figures stepped out onto the platform. Two of them were bodyguards to the one walking in front. The leader's steps were heavy but firm, as he made his ways to the other side of the room.

The sunlight that shone down through the opening in the wall was left behind when he walked into the shadows. The guards fanned out to stand on either side of the only entrance as the leader continued on alone.

His breath was strained, and a dry nasty cough wracked his body. He came to a stop in front of a circular terminal. Robotic fingers darted over the terminal when he quickly pressed three buttons on the console and accepted the incoming call.

The machine bleeped a few high notes and immediately after a blue glow flickered from the middle of the terminal. The shape it formed was familiar to the figure, even if it was cover from head to toe in a heavy cloak.

"Yes, Lord Sidious." The figure said and bowed. The question implied in his tone did not hang in the air between them for long.

"General Grievous." Sidious greeted, he made the smallest pause and silently watched the general straighten back into his full height. "I suggest you move the separatist leaders to Mustafar."

"It will be done my lord." The General said, and bowed once again to the cloaked Sith, that showed no reaction to the respectful gesture.

"The end of the war is near, General." Sidious continued in the same monotone voice as if the general had not spoken at all.

"But the loss of count Dooku-"

"Yes, I know." Darth Sidious interrupted, and clenched his jaw in suppressed anger. "That was not how I envisioned we would lose the good count."

The answer when it came was carefully controlled, but there was something odd about that statement that the general could not put his finger on. Grievous choose not to comment on it, count Dooku was after all dead, and Grievous had to focus on the living now.

The time for grieving would come later.

Sidious might seem unconcerned about the war, but Grievous was not. He could not keep fighting a war on so many fronts, and the capture of Palpatine was supposed to have at least improved the catastrophic morale. Instead the mission had ended in disaster.

Not only had they lost almost half the ships they entered the battle with, but they had also lost one of their most skilled commanders. What made matters worse was the fact that count Dooku was a very public figure in the separatist propaganda.

He didn't want to think about what kind of ripple effect his death would have in the ranks, when the news got out.

… It was also a personal loss.

The count had never really been a friend, but Grievous had respected him more than anyone left in the army because so few of the officers were actual warriors. Most of them hid like cowards far behind the lines and never saw any combat personally.

Count Dooku had been different.

"Do you know his murderer?" The general asked and allowed himself this personal question because it was also vital to the war effort. The troops were going to need retaliation for the Count's demise. If he could catch the little yellow-eyed bastard that murdered Dooku, he had no doubt that it would boost the morale.

It would hopefully also turn this shameful defeat into something more bearable.

"I know he is on Coruscant." Sidious said. Grievous watched his leader closely for any outward sign of emotion, but as always Sidious was impossible to read. The heavy hood made it impossible to get any clue to his leader reactions. "Find him for me." Sidious ordered, and Grievous noted with approval that there was finally real anger in those words.

"It will be done, my lord."

* * *

To be continued:::;


	9. There is no doubt

_**Chapter 9 - There is no doubt that the mysterious warrior was a Sith**_ (Mace Windu)

* * *

 _"How did he turn?"_

 _"You were not told?" The being smiled widely like Luke had just told a joke that was so bad it was funny, in a pathetic way. "…Now that is just something else." The Sith looked pleased about this, about having another advantage over him._

 _Luke was just tired. It was a long time since he had been anything else._

 _He looked up at the Sith's yellow eyes with a sternness and a willpower that was only a part of his facade. "The only teachers I ever had were Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda." Luke said like it was explanation enough in itself._

 _"Ah!" The Sith muttered in understanding, even if its smile was just as welcoming as a rancor's. "Yes… those two have a very special way of treating the truth." It paused for moment and the smile lengthened a fraction when it added. "Sorry, I meant_ _ **had**_ _."_

 _Luke nodded softly like the apology had actually been genuine but his own smile was a resigned bitter thing. He pondered for a moment how anything like this creature in front of him could have been created. What had happened to make it so twisted? Was it the same thing that had happen to his father?_

 _"Are you going to tell me?" He asked instead. It was unlikely that the Sith even remembered at this point who it had been in the beginning and even if it did he doubted it would tell him. Besides, Vader hadn't remembered in the end and neither had she. Maybe the dark side wiped someone's mind when they turned from the light._

 _Maybe it truly was death in way._

 _He hoped it was_

 _"Of course not." the Sith answered Luke's question mildly with that sinister crooked smile painted on its face. "I will not spoil the experience for you."_

* * *

Sirens howled above him and went speeding towards the crash site. The light blinking both blue and red blasted the building above in the coloured lights for a moment before the vehicle was out of sight. Looking up at it, it had looked more than a shooting star than an ambulance, and just as far away for the people living down in the slums.

The hood was damp and heavy and clung to him tightly like a second skin. It was uncomfortable, sticky and itched like nothing else, but taking it off didn't even cross Luke's mind as he pushed through the crowd. He doubted the Jedi were looking for him yet, but he didn't want to risk it.

Someone would come asking sooner or later.

It was what he would have done himself.

 _'I will not spoil it for you.'_ That whisper replayed inside his mind as he ducked his head further beneath the hood. But spoil what exactly? Luke already knew how it ended and who had done it. What more could there be?

"And spoil what?" Luke mumbled to himself. "How it happened does no change anythin-."

A shoulder pushed hard against his and interrupted his thoughts. The familiar stench of Sansanna spice left little to the imagination to why the stranger stumbled into him. Luke stopped for a moment and watched the guy as he disappeared down into an alley.

At the side of the road he saw a small group of three quickly follow the man down the alley. One of them had a blaster hidden in his belt. Luke only saw a glimpse of it underneath the jacket, but he knew it instantly. He had already taken two steps after them before he noticed what he was doing and stopped. His eyes fixed on the alley and his senses stretched further with aid of the force.

The thugs had almost caught up.

He shook his head, turned around and walked away with a grimace as he cut the connection to the force. The little light the man had been in Luke´s inner sight flickered out as did the three cold ones that were following him when Luke cut the connection and kept walking. He didn't look back.

Luke kept the cloak tight around him, but also kept his strides long and his back straight. In these sorts of places, looking vulnerable was an invitation for trouble.

A thought hit him unwillingly as he kept walking thought the streets. This place was eerie familiar of his home and that fact startled him more than he would care to admit. Of course the landscape of Tatooine was nowhere comparable to this urban setting, but the misery that soaked through everything in this place was.

 **That** was familiar

 **That** was just like home.

Just as uncomfortably familiar were the despair and the helplessness that radiated through the force from every person he passed. This did not look like that 'civilized age' Obi-Wan had spoken so fondly of.

It was not a comforting thought as he walked by a pair of beggars sitting up against the wall. But he was nothing like these people with defeat shining out of their eyes.

"You really lied about everything." He whispered to himself between his clenched teeth and felt an uncomfortable weight on his chest. "Didn't you?"

He ducked into an alley when suddenly the way ahead was blocked by a fence, and he turned and continued down a narrower pathway. He came to a stop when he reached the end of it. The street was surprisingly crowded for a city that had just been under siege.

He watched all manner of people walk past for a few seconds before he caught himself and moved out into the crowd. A group of thugs that had already been eyeing him turned back to their conversation as Luke disappeared from view

It was not a good idea to stand around in the open.

That was just like home too.

The first bar that came up on his walk was the one he slipped into. 'Home sweet home.´ a sarcastic voice commented in the back of his mind as the room came into view, and Luke could not disagree.

He had never been on Imperial Centre before, but this bar might as well have been on Tatooine. 'Even in the past I cannot escape that dust ball.' He thought, shook his head to himself and made his way to the bar.

'Force, I hate these places!' He thought to himself and was careful to keep his expression blank. Even if he still felt dislike curl in his stomach at the sight of the room he was stepping into he was still comforted by it in a twisted way. Disgusting places like this had in time grown to become familiar, and he liked it when things were familiar.

He always was a little conflicted on the matter.

A few heads had turned his way, but he must have appeared unimportant as they all returned to what they were doing before. He made his way to the bar and ordered a random drink. He locked his eyes on the screen behind that bar, where pictures from the battle in space were broadcasted on the news.

"Some fireworks, huh?" Someone in the crowd muttered beside him when a ship that looked similar to a Star Destroyer took a direct hit.

 _'I've seen them bigger',_ Luke thought to himself as the image changed.

 **'Breaking news'** appeared on the screen and an image of a ship landing down on a platform appeared. Luke narrowed his eyes and read the small text sliding in under the image. **'Chancellor Palpatine rescued, and returned to the senate by the hero without fear'.**

Luke suppressed the stab of fear that went through him when the imagery changed again and the senate building appeared next. The place looked extremely heavily guarded and fortified. He was not sure he could get in there and that had never been part the plan to begin with.

It was supposed to have ended by now.

He shook his head banishing the hopeless turn his thoughts had taken. ' _I have not lost yet_.' He told himself with his eyes locked on the screen where a smiling Sidious was speaking to an interviewer. _'I can still do this'_

It was not impossible. The chancellor was on this planet and within reach. Sidious would be heavily guarded by an elite force and maybe even by Jedi too. But not every Jedi was like Yoda, Anakin or Obi-Wan. If they had been, there would have been a lot more Jedi around in his own time.

He curled his fingers tighter around his left arm. The sting of the scars was intense. He breathed in heavily, once, twice, and swallowed the pain without allowing any discomfort to show on his face. The force came to him and wrapped around the pain with a quiet warm touch. The pain did not disappear, but it was blissfully muted.

"And there we have him, our very own Hero-Without-Fear!"

Luke snapped his eyes back to the screen above. On the screen was his father waving up at the camera that must be on some airborne craft. Just beside him was Obi-wan. Sidious was nowhere to be seen now but a big group was walking into the senate behind the two Jedi. It left Luke with a good indication of Sidious' whereabouts.

Luke's anger betrayed him before he could hide it.

"Yeah, I know." A voice spoke beside him. "I hate them too."

Luke wiped the anger from his face, but the man at his side seemed not to notice Luke's suddenly guarded expression and just kept on talking.

"Why should they have everything and us nothing?" He said with bitterness carved into his face. The man did not look old though. He would have appeared somewhere in his mid-thirties if not for his weathered skin, premature wrinkles and the dead look in his eyes. "I have slaved away every single day of my life without making any progress and they get everything handed to them on a silver platter."

Luke kept his silence but offered a cautious nod. The anger he felt from the stranger through the force was not a bright and fiery flame. It was old and felt like frost when he reached out to touch it.

No one spoke, but every single one of the people within earshot agreed with the speaker. Luke could sense the truth of it through the force. He reached wider, and followed the echoes of the resentment to the edge. A thought occurred to him there.

 _'No'_ He thought, pulled back and detached himself from the emotion. The scars burned ominously as he did so, as if voicing their own opinion. _'I cannot. That is going too far.'_

He stole a glance at the stranger that had turned his attention back to the half empty glass in front of him. His eyes were red and slightly puffy. He had been crying. Luke shifted his eyes and look forward, but he could still feel the misery from that man that had replaced the cold bitter anger.

 _'But can you win if you don't?'_ He thought with his hands curling around each other in his lap. 'Y _ou are all alone here, and if you fail…'_

Luke looked back to the screen and staring back at him on the screen was a smiling Sidious. It was not a kind smile. It looked greedy and evil, but in this moment Luke was grateful for it, because he would not have been able to do this without that false smile.

 _'There is no other way.'_ He told himself like it was an apology. _'I need a distraction.'_ If he had only known if he had days left or even just hours, he could plan this better out and do something smarter. Unfortunately that would take too much time. Time he was not sure that he had.

This game could end at any moment.

"I'm sorry." He whispered to the man beside him quietly enough so that he knew the man wouldn't hear. Luke's hands fell limp as he lifted them onto the wooden surface of the bar. His left hand never seemed as heavy as it did now, he folded it over the other and opened his connection to the force.

The light came flooding to him but he pushed it away to get to the cold on the other side. Vader had described the dark side of the force like an embrace.

To Luke it felt like a gaping void.

Where the light side was the loyal support of a friend, the dark side of the force was an alliance with a powerful but vengeful enemy. Regrettably there were some things you could not do with the light side alone, and sometimes your enemy knew you better than your best friend.

 _'Why should the Jedi have everything?'_ He whispered through the force unwillingly, his heart heavy with regret. He went deeper into the force, and reached towards the suffocating resentment. _'Why should they live in luxury while we suffer in the filth?'_ The discussion had just been about to die down, but the embers of anger had not burned out yet. _'It is not fair that they have everything.'_

He stroked that anger, made it grow and soon it was just as it was before.

 _'Why should they have everything?'_ He asked again and placed doubt in people's minds, even those who had not agreed he did not stop there. He needed more. _'Because of their magic?'_ At every mention of the Jedi, Luke threw a wave of anger through the force and watched as the change started to happen. _'Do they have a right to everything because they are unnatural?'_

First it was slow and the anger remained without direction.

 _'They are oppressors.'_ He let the persuasion spread and he felt sick when he felt the anger grow. He took a heavy breath and forced himself to continue spitting lies. _'They say they are our protectors but half the city is on fire.'_ The whispered words seeped into the room and clung to every negative thought like a sickness. _'The Jedi only saved the rich and the politicians before they went back into their palace'_

This would not have worked on force-sensitives. A force-sensitive would have heard his voice in their minds and know that it was not their own thoughts speaking to them. But as Luke suspected, he was the only one here with any knowledge of the force.

 _'The senate does not care either. Has there been any attempt to come here to slums to see if we needed help?'_ He said through the force. 'No' He continued. He did not have to feign the disappointment. _'They were busier saving themselves.'_ He said this a voice filled with anger, but his hands shook where they were holding each other tightly on the bar.

Slowly, the flickering flame of anger became an inferno

 _'The Jedi and the senate… they deserve nothing'_ He whispered and his throat felt tight as he swallowed. He sensed the change around him. The multitude of voices were becoming one. The room was becoming so much colder and he felt sick knowing he was the one causing it. 'They don't care about us at all' He forced himself to say, and bleed more fear and more anger into the room. 'They need to be removed.'

It was the final nail in the coffin.

All at once everyone stopped moving. All sounds stopped aside from the news channel still humming in the background.

He rose from the chair. No one looked at him as he stood and turned. Everyone sat frozen in their chairs and their eyes looked blindly out at nothing. They were all trapped within their own minds.

 _'The Jedi and the senate should not have this power.'_ He said to all of them through the force. _'We must take it back.'_ There was a slight resistance. He felt an untrained mind fighting against the bonds. He turned his head to the presence. It was an older man and he was looking right at him. Luke looked him right into his eyes as he gave the order.

 _'We must take it back **now** '_

He felt something break in the force. It sounded like glass and felt like frost when it cracked. The anger in the room changed, he could feel it as it focused and found a target for the rage. When they started moving for the exit, the elderly man moved as well. His mind was now like the others. Luke swallowed and looked away.

It was too late to regret now.

He made sure to keep the contact to the force strong and stable as he moved with the crowd that was becoming more and more loud. As soon as the cold air on the streets brushed his face under the hood, he pushed another wave of anger through the force.

He closed his eyes and envisioned his net of persuasion spreading like a spider web from him. It filled the room behind him and stretched further out and brought the resentment outside into the streets.

The group began to move. Luke walked like a silent shadow between them and feed them the anger, the frustration and the pain that he needed them to feel. The negative feelings spread through the streets they passed, and the mob grew in size quicker than he had anticipated.

A body moved past. It was the man from the bar. It was the one that had been crying Luke's realized and his stomach made a painful twist.

He steeled himself and pushed the doubt back into the dark place of his mind where it came from. He knew what had to be done. There was no point in this continued self-doubt. It served no purpose, because he already knew how all this was going to en-

A stab of pain went through his arm. His feet stumbled over something that sounded metallic. He stopped against a clammy wall feeling the cold touch on his skin. His breath burned a path into his lungs and his entire left arm felt like it was on fire.

As his own created mob slowly moved past him he leaned heavily against the damp wall and pressed his forehead against the comforting cold wall.

He breathed in, mumbled the familiar words under his breath, and the darkness pulled back. His eyes remained closed. It was a comforting veil between him and the rest of the world for a few moments until his heart started beating at a normal pace and the pain was more manageable.

"No emotion." He told himself and breathed in deeply once more.

He had gone to deep this time. He knew that. The pain in his arm intensified again. He hissed unwillingly in pain and his fingers gripped his arms over the scars, trying to ignore how close that was to hugging himself. Beneath his fingers, for a split second, it felt like something moved under his skin.

His fingers shook when he ripped the tattered sleeve out of the way, and horror tore through him when he saw what it had hidden. He shook his head and the hand snapped back as if it had been burned when he realized what was happening.

The scars

They were spreading.

* * *

The Jedi council chamber towering over the rest of the Jedi temple at the top of the tall thin spire was as calm as the city below was chaotic. The black smoke from the crashed destroyer was the only thing that broke the endless blue sky Obi-Wan saw before him.

The beautiful blue sky was an often overlooked natural phenomenon on this planet, and one that Obi-wan had always treasured.

"We do not know this new Sith." He said and looked again at the blackness that ruined the sight of the blue sky for him this day. Then he turned his attention back to the council meeting. "I for one have never encountered him before." This he was certain of in the midst of all the other uncertainties.

He had always had an excellent memory. He would have remembered someone like that.

"Know his identity, we do?" Yoda asked. As usual his face was pensive but he looked worried. More worried than usual. Obi-Wan was loathed to bring the aged Jedi Master more bad news, so he hesitated. In the silence, Anakin answered the question for him

"Vader is his name." Anakin said with a guarded expression. His entire posture was tense. Something was clearly troubling him and Obi-Wan once again regretted not talking to him before they came here.

"…Vader?" Mace Windu repeated with a searching look at Anakin. He exchanged looks with Yoda before he asked. "Is he the Sith lord we have been looking for?"

"I am not sure." Obi-Wan answered the question before his troubled former Padawan got the chance "He seems too young to have been involved in this war since the beginning. I think he is another apprentice."

"I do not think that he is new to the ways of the force." Anakin disagreed with a silent apology to his old master. "But he had a poor teacher." Anakin supplied without looking at anyone. "His fighting style is fluid, but it is a strange mix of moves. There is some form V in it, but the rest of his fighting form is a mess and he seems to make most of it up as he goes."

"Leaving something out, you are Knight Skywalker?"

"I…He did not know what a Padawan was." Anakin answered hesitantly, and Mace Windu scoffed "The surprise was real!" Anakin snapped. "I felt it." He insisted with a barely restrained glare at the council member.

"If ignorant of the Jedi he is, unlikely that the Sith lord he is."

"He is still a danger." Mace Windu pointed out.

"He is." Anakin said, for the first time in his life agreeing with Jedi Windu. "He might be insufficiently trained in the force, but his force presence was so dark it was blinding." He shared a look with Obi-wan. "I have never felt anything like it, not even with Dooku."

"He is also a mind reader, and very skilled in force persuasion." Obi-Wan added. "I was almost too much for me to resist." He said and gestured an arm out to indicate the city behind him. "The damage he could do here…" He left the last unsaid.

The entire planet was populated by people without any training in the force at all, and would be powerless in the face of such evil. The consequences of a Sith let loose in this city could be catastrophic especially one they knew so little about.

For a long moment there was an unbroken silence. Yoda leaned slightly forward which somehow made his age face appear even older.

"Take care of this, will you, Master Windu?"

Windu had barely nodded his consent before Yoda continued.

"Assist in this investigation Knight Skywalker will."

"What!?" Mace Windu could not have looked more offended if he had tried. Anakin blinked in surprise before the realization sank in that he would not be left on the side-lines this time.

It was hard for Anakin not to smile, because the look on Windu's face was absolutely priceless, but he managed to suppress it. Then the discussion turned back to the war effort and what they could expect from the separatists now that they lost their supreme commander.

It was harder for Anakin to concentrate on this. He was usually very engaged when it came to these things, but what Padmé had just told him moments before was still buzzing in his head and dominated any other thought.

He was going to be a father, he realized with an intense and mixed sense of joy, pride and terror that he could not compare to anything else he had ever felt.

But Jedi knights could not be fathers.

He suppressed a sigh and felt even more tension collect at his shoulders. Being a father and a Jedi was no possible in this world he lived in, but he had to find a way to make it work somehow. He had to.

He could keep it a secret that he was the father, and he could visit Padmé and the child whenever he could…but that would mean that he essentially left Padmé as a single mother. She would have to give up on many things if she was the baby's sole caretaker.

She might even have to give up her political position that was very demanding on her time. A position and a job she loved so much and was so very passionate about. The thought of being partly responsible of taking that from her tasted nasty in his mouth.

No.

He could not do that to her.

But what was the alternative? He could not leave the order either. Being a Jedi was all he knew how to do. He bit his lip and looked, really looked, at the Jedi masters sitting around him. Would anyone of them speak his case? Was there even the slightest possibility that they would accept that he was both a father and Jedi?

At the last thought his eyes fell on Obi-Wan, the man that had been more a father to him than anyone. Would he understand?

He sighed inwardly.

A hunt for a Sith was just what he needed as both a distraction and an excuse to vent this frustration on a target that had had it coming. Then he could focus on what his options were regarding the baby.

One thing at a time.

Then suddenly he felt a disturbance in the force. The usual chaotic impression he felt from the city below quieted. Where there had been multiple thoughts and feelings mixing together in a roaring storm came a deadening silence. He felt nothing from the force but that complete silence.

"Can you feel that?" He said and the room became quiet.

No.

It was not a silence he heard. The multitude of voices had not become silent. They had become one. It felt like a void, but it was a void that was sentient. It was a vortex of pain, anger and despair. He had only felt such a pure unfiltered dark side like that once before.

The image of the yellow eyed assassin that killed Dooku stared back at him in his mind. The force called to him, tugged him towards the window like it was pulling him on a string. At first he did not understand. He noticed all eyes on him as he obeyed the pull towards the windows and looked with all his senses.

Then he understood.

"...Obi-Wan." He said, with his eyes fixed on the enormous group of people closing in on the temple.

"What is this? A riot?"

"Force corruption, this is." Yoda said suddenly right beside Anakin who was almost startled since it seemed like the ancient Jedi master had suddenly appeared out of thin air.

Mace Windu was already moving by the time Yoda started speaking. Obi-Wan hurried after him out of the door. Anakin moved to follow, but he was stopped by a small green hand. He looked down to meet Yoda's determined expression. "Controlled they are. Find the puppeteer you must."

* * *

To be continued:::::;;;


	10. I have waited

_**Author's note:**_ Another long wait, I know, but I proudly present the next chapter in the story. There might still be some time between updates in the future despite my best intentions, but rest assured that I have no plans of abandoning the story.

A huge thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta the chapter. :)

\- Scamasax

* * *

 _ **Chapter 10 - I have waited a long time for this moment (Darth Sidious)**_

 _It felt final… being in this place, like a door was slowly sliding shut even as he sat here._

 _'He looks even smaller now' Luke thought and looked to the side to spare himself the sight of the ancient Jedi for a few precious seconds. Despite what had happened, he could not be pleased by this sight. He had seen too much death to celebrate it in any form._

 _He breathed in deeply and felt the cold air travel down his throat into his lungs as he looked out the window. The only thing visible to his eyes were the dark forest beyond that had always held more questions than answers. Unwillingly he felt his shoulders tense instinctively._

 _He had never liked the trees surrounding Yoda's house._

 _They had an eerie resemblance to crooked spines._

 _"Back, you are." Yoda finally said and broke the heavy silence between them. It sounded painful for him, just speaking those three words and in the force something bright was growing steadily dimmer. Luke dragged his eyes away from the haunting collection of trees and looked over to the man he had come here to see one last time._

 _Luke only nodded softly to the statement because he did not trust his voice._

 _It would betray him._

 _'Yes, but for what point and purpose?' Luke thought to himself. In truth, he had hoped to avoid this meeting altogether and he had been deliberately slow in getting here because of it. But this last confrontation was unavoidable as he had known it would be, even before he started the journey._

 _Yoda made no sound, but looked back at him with an unreadable expression. The regret Luke had felt from the old Jedi when he came here was carefully hidden. It was unnecessary because Luke already knew what Yoda regretted, but he appreciated the gesture._

 _'You know now you picked the wrong one, don't you?' Luke thought. The truth of it still tasted bitter in his mouth. Yoda had chosen the wrong student from the very beginning. 'You choose the wrong twin.'_

 _Still, there was some comfort in the fact that Yoda used what little strength he had left to hide his regret. It was as close to an apology that Luke was likely to get. Luke fought back a heavy sigh and instead allowed his frown to deepen. Defiance was easier to handle than regret._

 _"You are dying." He said. The vulnerability he felt did not escape into his voice to his immense relief, but as a result the words sounded hasher than he meant them to be._

 _But not by much._

 _"I am." Yoda said like it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy and he sounded almost amused at the thought. Luke blinked, lightly startled at the honesty of that feeling. "Surprised, you are."_

 _"I thought you would be dead by now." Luke said with the familiar feeling of dread that he tried his best to ignore. "You told me as much when I left here."_

 _Yoda did not answer that._

 _Luke had found, that there were many things Yoda did not answer._

 _"I suppose you already know this, but it's over." He said with as little emotion as he could, but the words still burned on his tongue. "The war is lost."_

 _"Always in motion, the future is." Yoda said with a pensive look in his eyes, like he was remembering a lesson from long ago. "Set in stone, nothing is." There was a wistful expression on his face when he said that._

 _Luke silently disagreed, though he kept the words behind his teeth. Nothing could be done now to change anything. He wanted nothing more than to find a way out of this and somehow turn this war around._

 _But there wasn't a way out._

 _Not this time_

 _'Maybe it was always meant to end like this.' He thought. He had played all his cards and that was what the emperor had done too. He sighed and brushed his hand over his face and felt the tiredness bleeding into his bones._

 _Maybe he should just do as Lando had suggested and find a reclusive corner on the edge of the galaxy and live out the remainder of his life there. He might even manage to live a full life before the empire caught up to him._

 _Yoda breathed in a dry heaving gasp that had a liquid quality to it. Luke reached forward and adjusted the worn blanket draped over the thin form._

 _Despite Yoda's weakened state Luke knew he should still feel some small measure of anger for what the Jedi had done. But there was no anger as Luke looked down on the crumpled form._

 _'He only did what he thought was the right thing.' An inner thought said carefully. Luke sighed and shook his head. Luke could not fault Yoda for what he had done no matter how much he wanted to. What Yoda had done was a horrible mistake, but he had had good intentions._

 _'And he is not the only who has made mistakes in this war.' Luke reminded himself painfully. Still, just looking at the Jedi hurt in so many ways, because Yoda had cost him so much. So many things had happened, so many horrible things, and they could all have been avoided had Yoda just-._

 _Not lied._

 _"You lied to me." He said, with his eyes fixed down on his hands folded in his lap. He could not look at the Jedi master when he finally asked the only question he really wanted answered. "Why?"_

 _Again, Yoda did not answer just like Luke expected him to._

 _"It was a mistake." Luke said. There was an old bitterness hidden under those words, but it was more directed at himself than it was at Yoda. As much as Luke would like to blame it all on the Jedi, he knew that he carried most of the blame for what had happened in this terrible war._

 _Just not for what had happened that day on Bespin._

 _That was Yoda's fault._

* * *

Anakin saw Obi-Wan disappear out of the room with the others. The departing Jedi council dragged their shadows out of the room behind them and their running steps faded quickly into complete silence. The room became empty in seconds.

In the span of a breath, he was the only one left in the room

Him, and Yoda

The quiet that arrived to keep them company in the room was somehow more deadening than the sound of the departing steps.

He looked down to meet Yoda's eyes with a frown carved deep between his brows. It was a battle all in itself for Anakin not to pull his arm free of Yoda's hand and rush after the others, but he reminded himself that Yoda always had his reasons for everything he did.

Always

Anakin trusted Yoda with this and so much else, that the aging hand around his wrist might as well have been an iron chain. He had never doubted Yoda's word, and he would not start now.

"Master?" Anakin asked, noting the brief look of doubt flicker over Yoda features.

The sounds of the battle outside sounded louder and almost lured him to the door. Almost. Battle had become almost second nature to him after fighting in a seemingly endless war. It felt wrong not to help if he could, and he was glad to do it if it meant someone else didn't have to.

Still he trusted Yoda's decision.

"What do you need?"

"Very important it is, to stop the Sith's connection to these people." Yoda said calmly. Slowly, like he was reluctant to do it, he let go of Anakin's arm and the area felt colder. "Disturbing is this act by our unknown enemy, put a stop to it quickly, we must."

As if to stress the truth of the Jedi master's words, the noise outside became even louder than before. It sounded like the voices of hundreds of people raised in anger, but the words sounded distorted even from here, as if it came from rabid animals rather than people.

But he could not hear any blasters being fired.

 _'Not yet at least.'_ Anakin thought, but he doubted that small mercy would last for long. He had seen what Vader was capable of in close combat. He was not eager to know how far Vader's abilities stretched in other skills of the force.

He remembered all too clearly the extreme power of the force blast that had knocked him out in his first confrontation with Vader. It had been like staring into the blinding heart of a supernova.

 _'And I have only felt the same power from one other person.'_ Anakin thought with another look at the Jedi in front of him.

Vader was powerful and his role in this was still unclear, which in turn made him more dangerous. _'He is clearly not a friend of the republic.'_ Anakin thought. But from Vader ruthlessness against General Grievous forces on the battleship, it was clear that he was not an ally of the separatists either.

He somehow had his own agenda in all of this.

"What do you need me to do?" Anakin asked Yoda and dragged himself free of the pull. It was still there though like a burning stare at his back.

"Met him before, you have." Yoda continued and the sound of his voice helped Anakin pull completely away from the almost overpowering urge to dive deeper into the force. "For you, easier he will be to find." Yoda explained and walked slowly over to his chair where he sank into the soft seat.

"Remember his presence in the force, you do?" Yoda said, and gestured at Anakin to take a seat.

 _'You think I would just forget something like that?'_ Anakin thought, but said instead as he sat down in front of the Jedi master. "Yes. I do." Then he dared ask. "Why do you ask, master?"

"Feel him at all, I do not. Only a void, I sense" Yoda said and his brow wrinkled. "And to stop this, find him I need to." Yoda turned his eyes up to meet Anakin's. "Block him for a time, I can. Stop his control of the people, it should."

 _'Should…'_ Anakin thought with a stab of unease. He breathed in heavily, more affected by the great disturbance than he would admit.

There was a… calling from the vortex of sound and discord the force had become. It was getting harder and harder to ignore, and for some reason all he could suddenly think about was Tatooine and a little white house that was burning.

Disturbance or not, it felt like something was calling out to him.

"How do we do this?" Anakin asked and wrestled his focus back to the conversation and trying to ignore the calling that became louder and louder. The image of a towering figure, dark tunnel and a red lightsaber danced behind his eyes.

"Close your eyes and remember your meeting with Vader, you must." Yoda said and finally threw a brief look outside the window. "Show me his presence. Then stop him from controlling these innocent people and end this, I will." Yoda said with an almost chilling finality, like it was already done.

"Alright, I'll do it" Anakin said and then with a final look out the window, he nodded

"Meditate. Find him, but reach out to him, do not." Yoda said and he had barely finished speaking before Anakin was settling into the meditation. The Sith, Vader, appeared easily to his inner eye. "Let him see you, do not."

Anakin nodded and carefully opened his connection out to the force. He dug into his memories, trying to remember the dark presence he had felt only moments before. Then he looked into the force, but his searching inner eyes found nothing.

There was nothing but the deadening ocean of fragmented noise that force had become. Anakin had never before felt such a great disturbance in the force, and there was something underneath the roaring chorus of twisted and crooked sounds.

 _'Why can't I find you?'_ Anakin thought and blocked the strange feeling out. He felt nothing from the dark presence he knew was out there, even the memories of him were somehow inconsistent.

He remembered Vader's anger, and the determination in his yellow eyes. He remembered Vader's presence, but he could not feel it.

Vader did not feel like a presence.

 _'He felt like a void'_ Anakin thought, with the memory of the disarmed Vader staring back at him with the strangest look in his eyes. If Anakin had not known better, he would have said for a moment there was a soft kind of pity in Vader's yellow eyes just before Anakin had pressed closer with the lightsaber.

Then they had been wide open in fear.

Anakin grimaced and renewed his effort in the search. Despite what the Jedi Masters said about recognizing a force presence, Anakin had never felt the emotionless 'imprint' they spoke of. To him everyone felt like a unique collections of dominant emotions.

Padmé felt like a warm kindness mixed with pure devotion, Obi-Wan felt equal part stress and worry, and Ahsoka had felt like joy and determination. Windu somehow felt like he suffered from chronic disappointment in everything, and Yoda…always felt tired.

Vader in comparison felt like an absence.

Like he did not exist.

But for a moment there had been a glimpse of something else. Something beneath the cloaked anger. ' _Something darker'_ He dove deeper but the disturbance raged around him like a storm.

It was so hard to focus.

 _'What was that feeling?'_ Anakin strained to remember that strange feeling he had felt a second before Vader had knocked him out. When he had said Vader's name. _'What was it?'_ Barely had he ended the thought before he felt something

He stretched his senses hesitantly into the vortex searching for Vader presence.

Then, he felt him, Vader.

Here.

Now.

Vader did not sense his presence. His mind was focused elsewhere. It was centred on the chaos he was creating no doubt.

 _'How can he not sense me?'_ Anakin still thought in wonder fearing a trap, because Anakin knew the power of his own presence. Even a Padawan would have sensed his presence this close, but he felt nothing from Vader aside from an intense concentration on the waking nightmare he was creating with his power from the dark side.

Vader's presence on the other hand felt like blood in the water, an exposed neck. It was an open invitation. There was a lot of damage that Anakin could do to an unprotected mind. Even from this distance.

He ignored the small stab of guilt he felt and quieted his force presence from the man sitting in front of him in the physical world.

Yoda would not notice what Anakin was about to do before it was already over. Yoda would not approve, and neither would Obi-Wan. _'But this is the right thing to do.'_ He thought. Who knew what the consequences might be if the Sith was not stopped now? _'Vader might even strike a fatal blow to the Jedi order.'_

The force in Anakin's control spread out and rose at his bidding.

 _'I cannot risk that.'_ He halted, barely more than a breath away from tightening the noose. _'Sorry Obi-Wan. I know the Jedi do not believe in killing their enemies.'_ He thought and remembered the look of horror on Vader's face when he stared at Dooku's dismembered hands. _'But I cannot risk it.'_

A picture of Padmé smiling face and a hesitant hand at her belly steeled his mind. 'I cannot afford to allow you to live, Vader.' He reached out with the force, and in the very same moment sensed a presence rush towards him.

It moved like a snake and looked like a shadow.

Everything changed, all at once. There was a distinctive feeling of not just being tugged towards something but the feeling of cold fingers digging into his arms and ripping him away.

An endless fog rushed forth and around him, blocking everything out. Anakin could not see anything, feel anything. His lips where heavy like they had turned to stone. His world turned black and all sounds muted.

 _'Yoda?'_ He called out into the dark, or he wanted to but his lips did not move at his command. His beating heart thundered quicker and quicker in his chest. His body felt like lead. He could not move anything. _'Master?'_ He called and listened, but nothing answered, the darkness surrounding him was unbroken.

Then Anakin felt eyes on him

 _'Who?'_ Anakin thought, and felt a singular presence where everything else had become a blurred violent entity. It was the architect of this mess somewhere in the dark. The presence that he had chased all the way here.

It had been a trap.

 ** _"Chosen one._** " A familiar voice rumbled inside his own mind.

 _'Vader'_ Anakin thought. He knew that presence, it was so tainted in the dark side that Anakin had to resist reacting to it. Vader was radiating anger, pain and despair so sharp and powerful that Anakin could swear he felt it bite against his skin.

Vader was not just tainted by the dark, but swallowed up by it completely.

Vader was a darkness that moved.

 ** _"How rude of you Skywalker, to look into someone else's mind like that."_** A voice said. The words echoed in an eerie way that made it sound like two voices were speaking rather than one. One of them sounded like Vader, but the second one didn't. It rumbled beneath Vader voice like caged beast.

Anakin tried to reply but he could not move his lips or even master enough control to answer through the force. He strained against the heavy pressure, trying to find a weakness in the iron control but he found nothing. Fear spiked within him as the battle against his bonds seemed more and more futile.

His heart drummed quicker and quicker in his chest. It was all for nothing. He was trapped. Trapped inside his own mind.

Vader's presence felt even more sinister than it had before, when he confronted him on the battleship. And as if there had been some unsaid command, the world suddenly returned around him when Vader opened Anakin's eyes.

Yoda was standing and the grip around his cane was tight.

 _'He does not feel dark.'_ Anakin thought as he felt Vader look back at him in the force. _'It feels like he does not have any force presence at all.'_ Anakin struggled against the sickening power keeping him still. The cold grip only tightened and coldness spread till it lay thick in the air. _'He feels like a force wound.'_ Anakin thought. _'A wound that is spreading.'_

As if he had read his mind, Vader suddenly smiled. Anakin felt his lips curl into a smile that was a mockery of his own.

 ** _"Master Yoda"_**. Vader voice said, but the words passed through Anakin's throat. **_"I had hoped I would get the chance to meet you."_** Anakin felt his head move into a polite light nod, despite Anakin trying everything he could to resist it.

He might as well have been beating his bare hands against a mountain.

The fear hit Anakin like a hammer. Anakin's hands felt clammy, his mouth felt dry and his breathing was strained and shallow. He tried not to let the Sith feel just how strong the fear grew within him. But how could Vader not know? The terror was practically screaming from the walls of his mind.

How was Vader even capable of doing this?

This was not even possible!

"Release knight Skywalker, you will." Yoda stared right into Anakin's eyes "Now."

Vader presence replied first with cold silence, then he moved slowly, pulling Anakin's body on a string until it stood tall and towered over Yoda. The darkness draped around Vader's presence was so deep it felt sinister just to look at it.

The darkness was so complete it felt eager and… sentient.

Like it was alive

 _ **"Don't think you have any control over what is happening, old man."**_ Vader's voice said. Anakin knew he did not imagine the lazy amusement he felt through the force from the Sith. **_"You are playing by my rules now, and I have only just begun."_**

"Many years ago since the rule of the Sith ended, it is." Yoda said, his voice was calm and seemingly unmoved by the threat. "That power, the Sith no longer has. Empty, your threat is." Yoda straightened, and fell into a posture Anakin had only seen once before many years ago, and at that time, he had been looking at Dooku.

Anakin could feel the power in Yoda build, the force rushed to him and collected around him. Anakin waited in the tense silence for Vader's reaction, but unlike Yoda he did not make any move to defend himself, despite the fact that Anakin's own lightsaber was well within reach.

Then Vader laughed

 ** _"Go right ahead Yoda, attack me. I will not defend myself."_** Vader threw out Anakin's arms in a surrendering pose. **_"Why should I? This is not even my body."_**

Vader's smile felt like bared teeth in Anakin's mind when the Sith continued. **_"And I warn you, do not try to force me out, Jedi. This is an ancient discipline and very difficult to maintain without… damaging the host."_ ** Vader said and smiled with Anakin's lips at the old Jedi. _**"Push me out, and I will rip his mind out with me when I go."**_

Yoda said nothing, but he paused, and the force collecting around him stilled. "If destroy Knight Skywalker's mind, you do. Kill you, I will."

Looking through his stolen eyes, Anakin did not doubt Yoda for one second and by the darkening for the force that held him, neither did Vader. But just before he felt his mouth open on its own accord the anger had been muted.

 ** _"You dare threaten me, Jedi?"_** Vader said, ripping the words from Anakin's throat like a puppeteer. Then he continued with words that were so soft and wondering that it sounded eerie. **_"You, who are the very reason why I am here?"_**

That was true, Anakin discovered with a shock.

He could feel the truth of it resound through the very force.

"Your own choice, this is." Yoda said with finality. His eyes were fixed on Vader's eyes, but somehow seemed to look beyond, at something Anakin could not see. "Met you before, I have not."

 _ **"Are you sure?"**_ Vader said sounding like he was hiding a nasty secret behind his teeth as he threw a look outside the window. **_"I must say, I am disappointed. I expected this to be much harder."_** Vader said without a flicker of disappointment felt from him. _ **"But I suppose it just proves that the old teachings are true. The force was never meant to be shared"**_

"The rule of two, you speak of?" Yoda asked, but it did not sound like a question and there was something…strange about it. Anakin could not put a finger on it, but he had known Yoda long enough to see there was something… off about the way he acted.

"Twisted, that belief is. Matter to you, It should not." Yoda looked at Vader like he was a puzzle he could not figure out.

Then as he saw a shadow move in the reflection of the glass Anakin realized.

Yoda was stalling

 _ **"One to hold the power and another to crave it."**_ Vader said like he was remembering a pleasant memory. **_"No more."_**

"Foolish that is. Disagree, I do." Yoda said, and Anakin had never in all his life seen the Jedi master look annoyed. But now the emotion was carved between Jedi's eyes in a frown. "A gift, the force is. Sharing that gift, greater joy and understanding to us all, it brings."

 ** _"The dark side is by far the superior to this…"_** Vader paused, his sentence faded between them as Vader's mind went searching for the right word to describe the Jedi order from a Sith's perspective. Even trapped as a captive audience Anakin was reluctantly impressed by the enormous size of Vader colourful collection of curses.

In the end, the word he chose was relatively mild. **_"…Abomination, that you have created master Yoda."_**

"Tested and broken before, the rule of two, has been. A long time ago."

 _ **"Well, clearly."**_ Vader said with the strangest glee. **_"Someone has not been paying very close attention, have they?"_** Vader had the nerve to let the question sound innocent as he made soft gesture towards the window behind him. **_"Do I have your attention now?"_**

Anakin knew he did not imagine the sinister pleasure Vader felt at uttering those words aloud. He strained against the hold one more, but the chains that bound him through the force were as unforgiving as they were strong.

He felt the bonds tighten even further. But inside, underneath the panic and the frustration he felt hope. It was only a whisper in the force, the presence that was closing in behind him. It was to so skilfully suppressed in the force that it was barely an imprint, but Anakin could feel it shorten the distance. The Jedi was almost there…

 _'A little longer'_ , Anakin thought

 _'Just a little longer.'_

"So this, your scheme is?" Yoda asked, but it didn't sound like a question. It sounded too firm to be that. "Return the dark side to the galaxy, you intend?

 _ **"Return?"**_ Vader said and managed to sound mildly insulted _**"I do not merely plan to return. I intend to rule-"**_

Anakin felt the chains binding him crack. A startle in the force told him Vader noticed in that same moment. But by then it was too late. Mace Windu's force grip was unyielding, and like ripping flesh from bone Vader was being torn off his victim.

There was no pain, Anakin registered, halfway caught between shock and gratitude. Not for him anyway.

Vader was another matter entirely.

 _ **"Well played Yoda."**_ Vader gasped in agony, the voice was even deeper than before and sounded unnaturally animalistic, like a wounded beast. Now there was only one voice speaking, the one that did not sound like Vader, and somewhere in the back of his mind Anakin thought he heard someone screaming.

Vader fell to his knees, collapsing in on himself under the pressure of the combined power of Yoda and Windu.

 _ **"But I am curious."**_ Vader's superior expression was strangled by the pain, but the hate strengthened in the eyes that narrowed at Yoda even as he fought against the Jedi Masters' power.

 _ **"Will you be able to live with yourself…"**_ Vader said gasping, his words barely louder than a whisper and his teeth bared in a wide smile that stretched further because of the pain Anakin could feel Vader endure. ** _"…Knowing what you have made him do?"_**

Vader was barely holding on. Anakin could feel him fighting fiercely to remain in control and failing. The dark force dug in with its sharp presence, clung to its victim for one more agonizing second. Then Anakin felt a rush of hope as he could feel the grip slipping.

Then Vader went for the throat

 _ **"I know Skywalker won't."**_ Vader said. All his strings ripped from Anakin as he was flung away into the dark vortex the force had become.

* * *

To be continued


	11. Perhaps

_**Chapter 11 – "Perhaps Revan never fell. The difference between a fall and a sacrifice is sometimes difficult."**_ (Darth Traya)

 _"So you are just going to give up? After all we have been through?" Luke could not believe it. Against the backdrop of peaceful open space what she had just said had sounded like a lie._

 _There was no way that the fifth fleet was gone!_

 _"It cannot be done commander. I am sorry." She looked away out the window to the stars blinking back at them from the blackness of space. Her posture was stiff, but he could see her shoulders shake when she whispered the next words. "We have lost the war."_

 _This was not new information. Silently, in his heart he had known for the longest time that this was the only way the war could end._

 _But no one had ever actually **said** the words before._

* * *

:::

 _'Damn it…what just…?.'_

Luke rose to his feet. The cold touch of the stones lingered on his knees like a mild frostbite that itched more than it burned. _'When did I fall?'_ Luke thought, his head was spinning and so was everything else. He clenched his eyes together and concentrated on breathing.

 _'What just happened?'_ His head kept spinning and he threw a hand out to keep balanced on the ground that was moving like a sea in a storm. Sickness collected in his throat, he tensed and forced it down while he clung harder to the shoulder he was sinking his fingers into.

Images of a white room flashed behind his eyes, and three figures. One of them looked like- _'… Father?'_

"What…" Luke said, his hand felt clammy against his head, and the coldness of the touch slowly made the world stop spinning.

"Stay where you are!" A voice said so loud that to Luke's hypersensitive senses it sounded harsh and unbearably sharp, like a gunshot. A bright flash flared to life instantly and powered only by instinct did Luke bring his hand up in time.

The blaster shot went wide. It crashed into the forcefield formed in a mere instance, it was thrown wide by the force of the collision and disappeared into the crowd. A second after Luke heard something hit the ground, a voice went quiet in the force and the cold intensified in the air.

The dark side of the force fed on the pain and the anger and its presence became stronger, like a wound in the force had opened. Only then, staring into the barrel of several blasters did Luke realize what had happened. His connection to the force, to the force persuasion, it had been broken.

This riot was out of his hands

The sharp sound of the blaster shot roaring to the sky still echoed in his mind

"Surrender!" The Stormtrooper demanded. His face was hidden by the familiar white helmet, and there was nothing but a steeled mind echoing back to Luke through the force. It was the same with the five troopers that were with him. They were accustomed to battle, a hardened calm was all that was felt from them.

But their minds were like an open door. Their mental shields were practically non-existent and pathetic that it was like an open invitation.

It was barely a touch. It was nothing like converting the patrons of the bar to do his bidding. That had been difficult and had taken considerable effort on his part, this though… a macabre opening had been carved into their very force signature.

It was like they had been made to be ruled.

He stepped forward towards the troopers that had frozen in place. When he stepped in between them, they moved as one and formed a protective circle around Luke. He cleared his head, from the strange vision from before of the white room. This was not the time.

"Where is Palpatine?" Luke asked the Commander of the team of Stormtroopers. "Is he still in the senate?" Without turning back towards Luke the man nodded. There was a glimpse of blue in the crowd and immediately after, the blaster shot followed.

Luke caught sight of another swipe of bright blue to the side. He threw an arm out aimed in the direction of the flash of blue and gave a sharp order.

"Fire!"

The blue bolted away with an unnatural speed. Luke noted with a hidden relief that the Jedi made it out of reach.

"Where?!" He demanded more than asked of the trooper still keeping his back to Luke and firing into the crowd.

"They took him to his office in the senate." The trooper said like he was walking in a dream. "That is the last thing I heard."

Luke nodded, he caught a flash out of the corner of his eyes. A vibroblade lay abandoned on the ground, its edge was splattered in red and the sunlight reflected the light on the polished steel. His shadow fell on it and blocked the light when he bent down to pick it up. The blade was heavy but well balance and he clipped it to his belt.

Luke looked up and followed the blue sky until his eyes met the familiar tall building of the Jedi temple. Now that he had personally seen the very slums of the city he understood how easy it had been to nurse the hatred and the anger of the people that were now his puppets.

Luke opened and closed the fingers of his left hand, the lines bent easily and naturally like blood veins. They caved so easily, and he knew, if he applied a little more pressure, he would break them. It was ridiculous the care he had to wield for their minds to remain whole.

It was like holding a wounded bird in his hands and if he put a little too much pressure on it, its little bones would snap. It was tempting to do so, despite his morals raging against it.

 _Why had he not tried this before, back home?_

"Do you have more soldiers under your command?" Luke asked, watching the soldiers usher him into shelter as if he had suddenly become their main priority. _'You actually believe you weren't their main priority after what you did before?'_ a malicious part of him asked and Luke had not the energy to quiet it down.

When the Stormtrooper nodded, it was twitchy abnormality, but then in essence, so was the soldier himself. Were these soldiers not just clones of each other?

Copies.

A voice nagged at the back of his mind, the words got lost and Luke did not care to listen to it.

This had to be done, then only after could he worry of what his bargain truly entailed. But in his heart he already knew. He had known almost since the beginning that there was only one way this could end.

"Call them to me."

* * *

:::

"Commander Fox, Answer me!" Commander Cody shouted over the comm system as if he had been speaking with a subordinate rather than a fellow commander. "What is going on?" He waited in tense silence, and stared down murderously at the communicator as if it was personally responsible for what was happening.

Obi-Wan fully understood Cody's uncharacteristic anger. Obi-wan had eyes too, even if he did not believe them right now. It was not every day one witness Clonetrooper's turn on their brothers-in-arms, and never in these massive numbers.

In seconds the riot he had thought they were finally getting under control had been plunged into a new level of chaos. The combat soldiers in their easily recognizable white armoured uniforms were in disarray, their formation broken. Because now the enemy was everywhere and the soldiers where firing at each other.

Cody could not sense what was really going on, but Obi-Wan could. It was like the force had been thrown into a black pit. _'I truly am a fool'_ , Obi-Wan berated himself. He had actually dared to believe that they had been winning this horrible war and it was only a matter of time before the separatists were beaten.

"Obi-Wan!" A voice sounded from behind him, and he turned to find Mace Windu closely followed by-

"Anakin! By the force!" Obi-wan was at his side in an instance. He looked like death warmed up. Thick black lines under his eyes made his glassy eyes appear even more sickly. Anakin looked like he had been haunted by a fever for weeks, but he had been fine minutes before. "What happen to you?"

"Vader did." Mace Windu answered for Anakin with a short look at the man that was not exactly worry, but it was close enough.

"Vader?" Obi-Wan eyes swooped to the entrance, but the gate was well fortified. "But he can't possibly be anywhere near-" he stopped himself. He sensed the eye of this storm in the force very clearly, but had not felt a shift that would signify that a long distance force attack was being attempted. That in itself was worrisome.

"Are you all right?" He could not stop himself from asking. Anakin nodded, but Obi-wan had never in his life seen a less convincing lie. If he had been Anakin's father, he would have shoved the man inside and demanded him to stay until the battle had been sorted out.

But he did not have that power anymore.

"Casualties?" Windu asked Cody in the background

"None yet, the defectors are using the stun setting and I have ordered my troops to do the same."

"…Curious" Windu said to himself rather than anyone else. He stood back with his fellow Jedi while Cody was still trying desperately the situation under control. "Are you sure you have not met this man before Obi-Wan?"

"Pretty sure, why?"

"According to Anakin, Vader called you a liar."

Obi-wan turned to his old Padawan who looked like a little boy who had been discovered doing something he shouldn't.

"It was back on the ship." Anakin explained and took great care to keep his eyes fixed on the battle. "It sounded personal. I am sorry, I meant to tell you but with everything that happened… I forgot."

"That doesn't matter right now." Mace interrupted before Obi-wan got his words past his teeth. "The only things that matter is, do you know him Kenobi?"

"I have never seen that man before in my life." He paused. "But I have been many places. Maybe he remembers me for something that happen early on in the war?"

It was the only plausible explanation.

But it didn't ring well in the force.

"It sounded like he _knew_ you." Anakin added in a distracted tone. "Personally." His eyes looked doubtful when he added. "He is not old. Maybe you met him when he was a kid."

 _'Like you met me on Tatooine.'_ Was the sentence that lingered unsaid between them. Obi-wan suspected that Anakin's past would never really leave him. It was one of the reasons why the council had opted not to take him into the order.

Personally Obi-wan had always thought Anakin's experiences as a child was a strength, not a weakness. _'There is no emotion, there is the force'_ was an important lesson. It taught one to try to look at any conflict from an outside perspective and not to be seduced by ones' own emotions and act carelessly.

Secretly though, he thought that this lesson had been take to the extreme these says. By only allowing babies into the order, he feared the Jedi order in time would be become stale. The Jedi had become far too remove from the many troubles of the galaxy.

He had been in the order long enough to watch the objectivity of the order become apathy. The teaching of the force taught distance from attachments, not distance from the galaxy itself.

And then of course there was the matter of the new Sith.

Obi-wan's brow wrinkled. I had been a long war, but was extremely unlikely that he would have forgotten a man like Vader. Not even if he had been a child when they met. He never forgot a face. Never. It was one talent that he liked to think he had gotten from one of his parents whoever they had been.

"Maybe" He answered instead of admitting his doubts. He believed the lie as little as when he had said it the first time. If he was honest with himself it was not the apparent hole in his memories that vexed him most. He knew it was childish, but he did not like to be known as a liar.

He omitted a truth here and there when it was strictly necessary, but he _never_ lied.

"And master Yoda?" He asked instead of acknowledge the thought.

"He is trying to find the Sith." Anakin said, with a renewed purpose in his eyes. Obi-wan knew that fire, and welcomed it. He had not cared at all for the stale look in his old padawan's eyes. "He knows his presence now." Anakin said and as if bidden by those very words, the force changed.

"He will mark Vader for us."

Obi-wan closed his eyes, when he opened them again he turned his head and looked into the crowd. Yoda had lit Vader's presence up like a beacon. "There."

* * *

:::

Luke felt a brief respite before he closed his eyes, he allowed the warmth of the light side to embrace him for a long wonderful moment. He had used too much of the dark side for too long, but he knew he had to use it just a little more before this was over.

But that was for later.

The light side of the force rushed to him like a long lost friend and the pain he had felt constantly ever since coming here was blissfully numbed. It felt like it had been an age since he had last meditated.

The wind pulled at him and the sound of the engine was calming. He breathed in and let the clean air into his lungs. His heart rate slowed down and the tension slowly bled out of his strained muscles. Even the scars now, hardly caused him any pain.

 _'There is a change in the force'_ Luke thought. _'And it is not just me.'_ The disturbance drew nearer. He could feel it. He breathed in once more and for a precious moment felt one with the force. Then the light was driven from him when the dark came rushing back.

He already knew what he would see when he opened his eyes. He knew two of them, and the third presence was the one he had caught a glimpse of after the ship crashed.

 _'Showtime.'_ He thought and reached out to the force. The coldness of the shadows was a pleasant distraction until his mind settled. The cloak was heavier than usual and his limbs under it were almost numb after sitting so long in the same position. The hood was a pleasant weight on his head though, as was the cool touch of the shadow that fell from the hood onto his face.

It was almost a comfort.

He kept that thought at the forefront of his mind when pushed off the cold stone pavement. His feet were unsteady on the ground, but he willed them to be strong no matter how much the muscles shook and resisted. He opened his eyes just in time to see them. The three he felt before.

He remained motionless until three different lightsaber's cut into his 'volunteer' vanguard. _'savage'_ he thought. _'Are these soldiers not supposed to be people they know?'_ Then one of the blue sabres broke through, and the time for thinking was over.

The blue saber followed a familiar pattern, but it was slower than it used to be. Like Anakin was already exhausted before the battle had barely started. Luke's blade rushed out to meet it. The steel of the vibroblade held fast against the blue lightsaber that had been Luke's too once.

Anakin's teeth were bared and there was only barely restrained anger shining from him in the force and beneath it, a shadow of fear.

 _But from what?_

Anakin first broke the parry and the lightsaber rushed in a move more dominated by strength than skill. Sparks flew when Luke's block came up faster than the blue lightsaber could move. The stench of burned metal hung thick in the air as the blue saber came down again with more fury than before.

The block was harder to hold, but Luke was close enough to hear Anakin breathe heavily under the strain and the fingers holding the saber up in a strong parry were already shaking. The second attack was a mistake. Anakin was off balance.

Luke ripped his right hand off the vibroblade and moved it forward in an openhanded punch. He heard his opponent gasp in surprise the moment before the massive power of the force-push blasted from his hand.

Thrown back and further off balance, Anakin stumbled, trying desperately to gain his feet. Luke did not give him the chance. The force threw him forward in a quick dash with the lightsaber at the front. The clash of the vibroblade and the lightsaber was brief, Luke twisted the blade in his hand stabbed it towards Anakin's foot.

The lightsaber barely connected in time and it was only allowed to be in the way because the ankle had not been Luke's real target. He tipped back on his heel and heaved the vibroblade back up and stabbed it forward. Anakin' eyes widened and Luke heard the startled gasp the second before the thin edge connected.

Then impossibly Anakin's hands snapped up and his finger closed around the blade. The blade should have cut straight through his hand, But Anakin did not even flinch when he tore it away from the bleeding cut at his brow.

Anakin already had a cybernetic hand!

Luke felt the pain of the Lightsaber before he saw it. The ground rushed up to meet him and the world span around him as the enormous force of the blow sent him crashing against the ground. The shield he barely managed to get up in time saved his arm, but the stench from the burned wound hung thick and repulsive in the air.

The cloak dragged around him as he kicked off the ground to gain some distance between them, however it was not enough. The sound of the fast stomping steps registered in his mind just before the blue blade dove again.

He fell back, and the lightsaber rushed so quickly and so closely past him that the saber only appeared to be a flash of light. He pulled the force to him, drawing strength from its power. Blaster shots fired loud in the background but Luke could not see how little time he had left.

He fell back, desperately trying to defend himself under the assault. Anakin's lightsaber was moving so fast there seemed to be three of them. He leaped back, striking forward at the same time and was nicked by the lightsaber following him as he tried to gain some distance.

The stone railing he landed on was cut clean through a second after he threw himself forward and over the charging Anakin. Powered by the force his jump hurled him through the air and landed behind Anakin. Without thinking and with his heart thundering faster and faster he swung his vibroblade around for another attack.

His feet left the ground as Luke threw himself forward. There was a sharp pain in his ankle, he noted with gritted teeth as their blades clashed again. _'I must have landed wrong'_ He ignored the pain and called the force to him.

The blast went wide and he just managed to see Anakin condescending smirk when Luke clenched his hand into a fist and the massive power he had collected whipped back around. Anakin threw himself flat and the force blast sailed over him. The blast only missed him by an inch.

It might as well have been a mile.

Luke did not give Anakin the time to recover. He hammered the vibroblade down against Anakin's unprotected back. He twisted it at the very last moment so he would not hit with the sharp edge but instead the flat harmless side.

But the blade did not make it there.

Anakin in the blink of an eye was gone, on the retreat. Now on the offensive, Luke pressed forth, trying to end it with powerful blows that hit the lightsaber with such a strength that he could not have hoped to accomplice without the force as his ally.

Anakin's back hit the wall he had not realized he was being backed into. The blades hissed in between them, locked in a heavy parry, but Anakin was on the defensive, with Luke channelling so much force power that Luke was stronger than him.

Anakin grit his teeth, locking eyes with Luke then a grim look darkened his eyes and he moved. Luke was so focused on keeping the block up that he did not see what happened next. The fist that shot in between the lightsaber and the vibroblade connected, and everything exploded into blinding pain.

The punch sent him stumbling back and the world twisted sideways when everything in his sight toppled. The cold stone of the pavement slithered up through the hood and everything was spinning. At the last moment he felt a shadow passing over him and a flash of blue. He snapped his hand against the ground, the force ignited from his fingers and the blast tossed him to the side like a ragdoll. Out of the reach of the lightsaber.

He heard the tiles crack under the force of Anakin's strike, as he rolled around again and tumbled to his feet. The vibroblade by some mercy was still in his hand. Horror descended on him like an icy wind on a winter's night and he could only stare at Anakin. He was still kneeling on the ground with the lightsaber embedded straight where Luke's head had been moments before.

Almost lazily Anakin turned his eyes to watch Luke out of the corner of his eyes before he slowly pushed a hand against the ground as stood, taking the lightsaber with him. He threw a look to the side, at Obi-Wan and the other Jedi trying to get to them. Then he turned to Luke.

And a shadow of all that darkness Luke had felt before focused only on him

Luke's own heavy breathing was all he could hear and when he stepped further back and was immediately ashamed at the intense relief that flooded all his senses when Anakin allowed the small retreat.

For a moment all he could do was breathe, heave air back into his lungs. The hood felt heavy and clammy around him, but Luke was grateful that it was somehow still in place after that intense duel. If it hadn't been, this game would already be over.

Anakin did not look winded at all. He just stood there with the blade at his side and that constant frown carved into his face.

"Are you getting worried, Vader?" Anakin said like they were two strangers making casual remarks about something insignificant. But he was tense as a wire. He could attack at any moment, Luke could feel the force was screaming the warning at him "You look worried."

Luke tightened his hand around the vibroblade, it stopped them from shaking. He stood up straight, his breath finally calming at the same time his heart beat stronger and faster in anticipation as he said. "You were a lot worse last time."

"I know how you move now." Anakin moved slowly to the side one step after another circling him, and Luke was forced to follow too keep the Jedi at a distance. "I knew a Padawan like you once. When he fought, he had the same pattern as you."

"He believed it would make him harder to fight, unpredictable." He continued like he had not noted the limp that Luke could not hide completely. "What he didn't realize was that by trying to master all the forms, he mastered none."

 _'This is not going to be easy.'_ Luke thought. This was not the same man he had duelled on the battleship. Something had happened in the meantime, that was obvious even after such a brief exchange.

There was something else there. Something that had not been there before. It felt like an equal measure of hope and fear in the force and…love. There was the brief impression of a woman before it disappeared behind Anakin's mental shields

Anakin knew then.

He knew he was going to be a father. What else could it possibly be? Luke could not travel outside his own life time and he had pushed it to the very limit with his bargain with the Sith. In every other attempt there had been to travel in time the travellers past was already born in the past they had travelled to.

But if Luke had waited that long, the war would be over.

"So you are telling me you don't like my fighting style. That it is wrong?" Luke kept Anakin well within his vision as he circled the other. "It has served me well enough. I already beat you twice, haven't I?" He stopped, tired of the game now that he had his breathing under control. "and it seems like it worked out all right for that other guy too." The vibroblade raised in his hand.

"Him?" Anakin said and had the gall to look condescending as he also stopped walking but the lightsaber was lowered at his side. "He died years ago." The comment was monotone but Luke felt the truth of it "He didn't even get off the drop ship in his first battle. Got hit by a blaster just as he was walking down the ramp." He shrugged with that condescending look still on his face. "Somehow he just didn't get the big picture."

Then a lightsaber hummed behind him and it was only then Luke realized that the gunfire around him had stopped.

"Put the blade down." The unknown voice said behind him. He had lost. He did not have to see Anakin's nasty grin to tell him that. But knowing he was going to lose in the end never had stopped him from fighting before.

But the second blade humming to life behind him didn't give him any other choice. He held his arm out to the side, vibroblade still clasped in his finger. "You are making a mistake." He said more because he wanted to say the words rather than the three Jedi around him needed to hear it. "Back off."

"I am not going to ask again." The warning rumbled again, but Luke did not let go. He did not think he was physically capable of surrendering anymore.

"Neither am I." Luke turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the purple lightsaber held at his back along with the man holding it. He hesitated on purpose. Maybe it was a masochistic side of him that he had yet to discover, but he genuinely wanted to see what they would do.

What would a Jedi do in such a situation?

A hand closed around his wrist. Luke's eyes snapped back and found himself staring back into the eyes of Obi-wan. His old teacher twisted the hand firmly, not enough to force the blade out of his hand, but enough for Luke to get the point. Luke huffed, and allowed his hand to open and the blade to fall into Obi-Wan's hand.

This didn't really matter anyway.

He had bought enough time.

Then suddenly Anakin was there grapping his shoulders and dragged him violently back to the wall he had been trapped against himself during the fight. Luke's ankle protested when he was harshly knocked back against the wall, but he didn't mind. The coldness of the stone wall behind him helped him focus.

Anakin tore the hood off and in the same second anger was replace by shock.

Luke wanted to gloat in the face of that surprise. He had had barely half a year's training if he was being extremely generous and he still managed to fool three fully trained Jedi. But the victory felt hollow in his chest when he looked up into Anakin's eyes and saw the horrible flicker of yellow.

* * *

:::

Anakin froze, the words he had been planning to say died on his tongue with the unanswered question that had lined themselves neatly up in his mind.

It was not Vader under the hood. It was a man in his mid-twenties with blond hair, just like Vader. Only… it wasn't him. The face of a man barely halfway through his second decade stared back at him. The eyes that looked up at him though were yellow.

Anakin could not help but to grit his teeth and clench his hands harder on the lightsaber while he tried to swallow the frustration and absorbing the reality that Vader had slipped through his fingers…Had played him.

Again

Obi-wan saw the anger and Vader must have seen it too. Why else would that bastard suddenly smile?

"Vader?" Anakin asked, in a question that formed itself into an accusation when it got past his teeth. Because the yellow eyes that looked back up at him…Those eyes Anakin would know anywhere.

"I thought you said that possessing someone was hard." He said, sounding more surprised than he wanted too. He had actually believed Vader when he said that. Believed the words of a murderer and a Sith.

Vader tilted the man's head slightly, and he hesitated for a moment too long. "Not if you are willing to pay the price." Vader said over the man's lips. He sounded confident as always, but there was a lie in there somewhere. Anakin could feel it.

 _'Why do I get the feeling that you don't have any idea what I am talking about?'_ Anakin thought when a shade of confusion passed over Vader's presence.

"I overestimated you, Hero without fear." Vader's voice passed over the unnamed man's lips and stood straighter leaned up against the wall. "I thought you would be here earlier." Vader said, and the yellow eyes stared back at him. The blue blade so close to his face did not seem to bother him in the slightest.

 _'And why would it?'_ Anakin thought and pulled his blade away from the defeated form. _'He is not the one who is going to suffer the consequences.'_ Anakin very being itched to end him. _'But this is not this man's fault.'_ He thought and was suddenly ashamed of the bruise already blooming on the unknown man's face and the blood he could see dripping slowly from the fingers.

"Where are you?" Anakin asked and scanned the crowd for the Sith.

Vader crooked the man's head slightly exposing the throat lazily as if he was actually considering the question. He leaned slightly back against the wall and looked up at Anakin through the damp hair that was not his. "I could tell you." Vader said, and his words sounded weird coming from this person's mouth. "but… I just don't want to."

 _'Immaturity…'_ Anakin thought and filed that information away for later. Vader might even be younger than he first thought. It took everything he had not to punch Vader in the face.

 _'…Why am I so unhinged?'_ He could feel himself how the force was in an uproar around him. How? _'I have never been in so little control before.'_

"Why stun?" Was the question he asks instead, trying to calm himself down. Vader was out of reach for now and the only thing he could do now was get as much information as possible from him. The more he knew, the easier Vader would be to find.

And he _**would**_ find him.

Anakin had never been more certain of anything else.

Vader was a very violent person, and violating peoples mind certainly didn't seem to push his moral boundaries. Not setting the blasters to kill made no sense.

Avoiding killing anyone… there was no advantage in it for him. Quite the opposite. Vader could easily have made the clone troopers kill each other in battle and decimated their forces in an instant.

"I didn't want to give you any more excuses" Vader said and laughed, but it was a hollow thing.

It was the weirdest thing Vader could have possibly said. Anakin snorted despite himself, but the hopeless laugh that twisted from his throat withered when the eyes that stared back at him didn't waver.

"What is that even supposed to mean?" He said, and because he was confused the words that came out were angry.

"The Jedi don't believe in killing their enemies." Vader said with a tired expression, like they were sharing a private joke, but there was a tightening around his eyes that looked like pain. "But they still do it, if they have to. It does not mean that you have to-." Vader said, a pained sound escaped from him and he moved the left arm closer to himself. But that made no sense, Anakin had not hit him there.

"Enough." Mace Windu said and stepped closer. At first, it looked like Vader's possessed puppet was going to say something, but at the end of it, the figures simply stilled in such an instant complete way that for any living creature would be unnatural.

The smile it painted over its teeth were as real as its face.

"A newcomer, with something to say?" Vader said, like he was delighted by the interruption if not for the odd glances he threw towards Anakin. Anakin noticed the attention with a frown, but he did not interrupt Windu as he walked up beside him.

"The strings you use to control this man. They leave a clear trail to you in the force." Windu said like he was bored. "I will see you soon."

"No you won't." Vader said and his hand moved. He froze when Windu's lightsaber flashed up in a guard so fast, it looked like it had simply appeared in the blink of an eye. Vader's hand remained frozen on the wall where it rested, but his only answer was a smile that was nothing more than a display of teeth. "There is only one way this can end, I have already seen it."

The yellow eyes moved to Anakin. There was a question in those narrowed eyes.

A dare.

Then Vader struck like a viper. The fingers dug into each of Anakin's shoulders and he was ripped forward, close to the Sith. He was already moving for his lightsaber when Vader words whispered secretly into his ear.

"I wonder. What _will_ they all say when they discover your secret?" Vader whispered and leaned even closer. The warm breath made Anakin shiver when it ghosted his ear. "Daddy."

To Anakin, in the moment that word escaped into the air, the entire world stopped. Everything stopped. All that existed came to halt and all there was were him and the Sith leaning into him

 _'How does he know that?!'_ He thought and his mind looped and looped again for a reason why. He found nothing. This Sith shouldn't know, couldn't know. This Sith that had not even existed in Anakin's world until a few hours ago should not know.

 _'That Sithspit cannot possibly know that!'_ he thought, but the yellow eyes were firm and the words inescapable. This Sith knew about Padmé.

Vader _**knew!**_

"Anakin!" Obi-wan was suddenly there, beside him shoving Vader back against the wall and placing himself physically between Anakin and Vader. "What did he say?" Obi-wan's eyes had not looked at him that worried in years and Anakin wondered how freaked out he must have looked to make Obi-wan act like that. "What did he do?"

Anakin felt a change in the force and snapped his eyes back to the Sith that was pinned to the wall by Windu. The purple blade hovered over Vader's heart.

From beneath Vader's stolen hand curled up on the wall, another hand appeared. The fingers whiter than bleached bones ghosted up between Vader's stolen fingers, curious and reaching and the very force was splintering with a screeching high-pitched sound.

Anakin's eyes zeroed on the hand and the unnatural white fingers that snaked up between the man's fingers. He could not feel them in the force at all. They should not be real. Could not be real.

Then Vader's hand turned.

And the yellow eyes turned into a soft brown.

* * *

:::

Luke breathed in deeply and untangled himself from the presence of the man. His entire body felt weird and shaky when his mind returned to where it belonged. It was like he had just run a hundred miles in the span of the last two minutes.

He rubbed his hand on his coat in an attempt to warm them, but the cold lingered like a handprint even after the hand that had left it was banished again.

Still.

A win was a win.

He shook the hand once more and brought his other hand up to curl around it, as he stared down on the streets flashing past below. The wind was strong and cold, but it did not bother him because this was a different kind of cold. It was natural unlike the touch that lingered stubbornly in his fingers.

 _'Please do something stupid, father._ ' He thought and looked back to the Jedi temple fading in the distance. _'Let them see what is happening to you. Maybe they can help and still stop it._ ' He thought, and wished that he could do so with greater conviction.

If Luke managed to do what he had set out to, Anakin would still need help to purge the dark side that was already tainting his presence.

The dropship suddenly shook under the strain and the engine rumbled louder as if in protest of the pace.

"Faster." He told the pilot and looked back out. He dropped the hand and focused his attention on the building in the distance that was closing in. The hood was flung from his head as another strong wind blew past, but Luke hardly noticed, just as he did not really feel the warm touch of the sun on his face. His attention was elsewhere.

The senate reached for the sky in an impressive display of architecture that made his mouth taste sour with the memory of the slums. He did not care at all for this enormous contrast between rich and poor in this civilized age.

He resisted the urge to rub the impressive bruise on his face that he knew he would be sporting soon. His father had a nasty right hook. But then again, he already knew that, just like he knew this brave new world looked a lot like the old one he had come from.

 _'No, it doesn't just_ _ **look**_ _like the one I came from'_ he thought. This was exactly like home. It was the same rule, with the same soldiers in the same uniforms. It was even the same emperor wearing a different name.

The empire was already here even if no one else could see it.

Maybe that was why the Sith in his own time had laughed. Luke tightened his hand into a fist, closed his eyes in a long blink. He had to do this. He had burned all his bridges coming here.

 _'This is the end.'_ He thought and looked back to the senate that came closer and closer each second, and with it came the cold presence that never stopped haunting him. _'Finally.'_

* * *

:::

To be continued.

* * *

Author's note: A fast update this time, I will do what I can to upload the following chapters just as fast. A great thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta the chapters. I would not be able to upload this quickly without this help and support.


	12. Saviour, conqueror, hero, villain

_**Chapter 12 -" Saviour, conqueror, hero, villain. You are all of these things... and yet you are nothing" – Darth Malak**_

* * *

 _This world was very beautiful._

 _There was so much more to see than the dusty outback he had grown up in. This enormous world that had opened up to him after he walked up the ramp of the millennium falcon, had endless possibilities._

 _It had hundreds of planets and star-systems. Planets made of an eternity of snow, forest or water with so many different cultures and people. It was an infinity of wonders just waiting to be discovered_

 _In the time that followed he had only found one constant rule in the many worlds that were littered between the sea of stars. Just one._

 _This world was beautiful…and very cruel_

 _"So if we do this, I can fix everything?" He asked not truly believing the words himself, he had in time learned not to. He could not afford any more mistakes. "The galaxy will go back to how it was before? To what it would have become?" It was everything he ever wanted, had begged for during these long days and nights, and yet he was hesitating in taking this offered hand._

 _There had to be a catch. Nothing in this world was ever given for free._

 _Or given at all._

 _ **'You were not listening were you?'** The creature said from under the hood, the teeth that framed the sentence were bared in a smile. It shifted the knife in its hands in a slow hypnotizing way, but the yellow eyes never left Luke. **'Life is not something you can simply undo, and time is not something that can be manipulated on a whim. Once something is written, it cannot be unwritten.'**_

 _To Luke's senses it did not feel like a lie._

 _For once._

 _"Then what exactly are you offering me?" If he could not change anything, then what was the point of this? "I have made it very clear to you why I am here and what I want."_

 _The Sith hesitated, its long fingers drummed on the knife making the oddest little melody that sounded kind somehow. **'Time is a linear thing that is intertwined in everything.'** The Sith finally said, he sounded for a moment more like a scholar than a Sith. ' **Time is a cruel mistress and she rarely changes her mind, but there is a way to do th**i **s** '_

 _"So what must I do then, when I go back?" Luke said, following the explanation and envisioning a calm stream in his mind like he once saw on a planet they visited briefly. "Do I create an alternative way for time to flow?"_

 _ **'Time does not flow, it is not a stream. It is a web with thousands upon thousands of threads.'** The Sith interrupted with more patience than Luke would ever had given it credit for. ' **Threads that are all woven together for a singular purpose.'** The knife in the Sith's hand suddenly stroked forward and Luke's breath caught until he realized it was not an attack._

 _The knife had separated a line in the air that had not been there before. Luke could feel the illusion now as much as he could see it dangling in the air. It shone, in a way, like faded moonlight but the light felt eerie, unnatural and the light side of the force withdrew from it._

 _It looked like a spider web, if spiders were the size of TIE fighters._

 _ **'And strings can be cut.'** It said like the thought was somehow amusing. Luke found himself hypnotized by the illusion. It looked so real. He resisted reaching his hand out to touch it because of the slight fear that it would be solid._

 _The string the knife had cut in half fell down to the sides and hung dangling over the floor cut high enough not to reach it. The way the stings hung limp in air looked so very real, just like the rest of the gigantic web that was so tall that the top of it disappeared up in the darkness above them._

 _If Luke had not known it was an illusion, he would not have believed it to be anything other than real._

 _ **'Time can be changed but only by cutting the right strings.'** The Sith continued, and either did not notice Luke's silent wonder, or simply did not care. The Sith walked closer to its own design and made two sharp movements._

 _The core of the web was ruined, and the strings fell around the carved openings like wilted flowers. ' **Cut these ones in the middle and sure, you have damaged the natural design.'** The Sith said and pointed at the damage it had created. **'But you have to be a lot more surgical to make the entire thing collapse.'** _

_The knife moved pointing upwards to the strings that clung to the walls._

 _There was no way the knife could have reached that far, but obediently the spider web caved in on itself. 'Not real' he reminded himself and watched with a strange detachment as the web crumbled, only held up by a single remaining thread attached to the celling._

 _"This is… we were going to change things, mend it…. not." Luke paused grasping for words that a Sith would understand. "This would be… breaking it."_

 _The Sith turned to face Luke again with the strangest look in its eyes. If that look had been borne by any other, it would have looked like wonder._

 _ **'… you have a very romantic way of looking at this.'** The Sith answered after a long pause. **'Changing time is not something gentle.'** The knife disappeared back into its robe, and the illusion behind the Sith flickered out leaving the room darker than before._

 _ **'You forget this is the dark side. You cannot create something new without breaking something of equal value.'** The words left faint echoes that had faded completely before the Sith's words again rang out in the dark. **'Do you understand now?'**_

 _"It won't come to that" Luke denied the image and even took a step back to distance himself. The words sounded false even to his own ears._

 _' **We shall see.'**_

* * *

:::

"Don't land." Luke ordered, silencing the demons in his mind with louder noise. The roar of the engine was a blessing. He could feel the long knives of his regrets clawing at his mind, but the deadening noise drowned them out.

The head of the hood muted the noise slightly and he ripped it off his head. To his relief the deadening noise around him reached another higher level of discord impossible to block out.

He revelled in it.

He learned to like noise, to crave it even. The louder the better. It was silence that was cruel, it always made him overthink everything. It made him doubt, not only the thing he was doing, but also the things he had done in the past.

There was only endless silence on Tatooine. Always.

Until _that_ day

"But sir." The commander said with disbelief, Luke noted that the man almost had to shout to be heard over the roaring engine. That could not be practical in combat. A smile crawled up on his lips and made them crooked.

It was nice to stumble upon such a glaring flaw.

"That is the only way in." The soldier protested mildly and pointed for good measure at the door far below them. Despite the Clonetrooper's misgivings about the order, the dropship instantly stopped its descent.

"Going that way would take too long." Luke said and stepped closer to the edge of the dropship the wind howled around him and mercifully drowned out everything, even the name hiding in the darkest corners of his mind. "Bring us up." He gestured upwards and the ship started to rise in the same moment.

The sky was blue above them. It was a clear blue that he only ever saw in one other place and his stomach clenched painfully.

"Where to, Sir?"

"Do you know where the chancellor's office is?" He asked, but his eyes were still held captive by that endless blue. Enthralled and imprisoned equally.

"You see." He said and leaned over the side and his eyes pulled down to look at the ground far below. The edge he was standing on was truthful in that it was painfully obvious that a fall from this height could have only one merciless outcome. The ground was very far away, so far that the people moving beneath were little more than black spots against the pavement. "I prefer a more direct approach."

He had an inexplicable urge to test if the jump was fatal. In theory, he should be able to slow his descent with the force. Or so he had read in a text once. He was not sure if one could survive if they were dropped from here, force or not.

He leaned closer over the edge, drawn in by the sight, teasing the demon hiding behind his eyes with the threat of death.

"Why knock on the door if you have a key?" He said fixated on the long drop and the pulling sensation that urged him come closer. To jump. For a moment an old memory stole his eyes and instead of the street in broad daylight below him, there was a bottomless pit surrounded by black walls.

"Sir?" Came the hesitant question, finally.

"Commander, how precise is your aim with the cannons on this thing?" He asked, and used the sound of his own voice to drag himself out of the memory he had dug himself into.

"It is what I do for a living, sir." The soldier said with professional pride like he was talking to a superior and not an enemy that had enslaved his mind. "I never miss."

"Good." Luke said reassured, the cold handle of the lightsabre found its way into his hands. "Aim the guns at the windows."

* * *

:::

This had to work. It had to.

The chancellor would listen to him.

The soldier looked down the slight sting in his arm had faded long ago, but the threat of what it had been lingered. What had she given him? And why?

He felt a tingling at his fingertips but he did not know if it was due to the drug or the nervousness that made his heart beat faster and faster in his chest.

The two people flanking him were silent, but he could feel the animosity thick in the air from one of them and frim determination from the other. He chose to focus on the latter, it calmed his mind a fraction.

Then the door slid smoothly open with a soft hissing sound and the one he had come this far to meet turned to face him.

* * *

:::::

The brown eyes looking back at Obi-Wan were wide and terrified. The man pressed closer against the wall as if it could swallow him up and he could escape from this scene.

He looked at Obi-wan like he was a Rancor about to eat him.

"It is no use, Vader is gone." Obi-Wan said and leaned back to appear less intimidating to the unnamed man, but he did not let go. The man looked just about ready to bolt… or faint. Obi-wan threw a look at Windu for conformation who nodded in agreement.

The answer was practically shouted back at him though the force. There was no lie in those eyes, only fear.

"I'm sorry. I don't-" The man stuttered, his fear spiked and the panic flared. "I didn't-." He looked away again, and he shifted the weight of his feet. Obi-Wan wanted to use force persuasion to make the man tell them where in the world Vader disappeared to, but the man's mind was already damaged, forcing his will on the man could leave lasting wounds.

In the end it is Anakin that acted first.

Somehow it was always him.

"Relax." He said in a way that sounded both comforting and firm as he gently gripped the man's right arm and guided him to a nearby bench. "Sit down, I need you to keep your weight off that ankle." He pulled the man down to the bench quickly enough to make the man emit a startled sound.

"Hand up over your heart. It will slow the bleeding" Anakin says and visibly tried not to look at the blood still dripping from it. "What is your name?" Obi-wan's old Padawan asked without missing a beat as he pulls a med kit out

At first it did not look like the man would answer. He sat completely frozen at the bench staring wide-eyed at Anakin.

"I-" He began finally and the word choked halfway up his throat. "Adrian Walker." Was the name he whispered creating a small puff of white smoke when his warm breath collided with the frosty air.

Obi-wan felt that cold to, but not just in the air. It was like it had settled in his very bones. The Dark side was powerful now, even in the absence of a master. The imprint of the dark side had been cut off from its creator but it had grown on its own, feasting on the pain and fear. The presence was practically a leviathan now, and it was still growing.

To clear the dark from this area would be an enormous task.

"Adrian." Anakin repeated finally and the soft sound of the bandage stopped and Obi-Wan turn back just in time to see Anakin finish the bandage on the hand. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"I-." he shook his head and the unwounded hand came up to cradle his face. "Sorry."

"Breathe in." Anakin said to the young man while keeping his voice very even. Doing what he had been taught to appear calming and less intimidating. "And out." He paused until the order was followed. "Again."

And finally Obi-wan was able to shake himself out of the stupor that had descended on him.

"I am sorry." He said and joined his old apprentice down on eye-level with the young Adrian. "But we need to stop the man that did this to you. Every moment counts."

Anakin sent him a displeased look that made his normally frowned eyebrows draw even closer together. His hand made a motion warding off Obi-wan. He was not surprise about this reaction, he had seen it before when Anakin was extraction information from someone. He had never really mastered force persuasion it had never really seemed like it interested him at all. He preferred to do it his own way.

Obi-wan dispelled the faint traces of that old disappointment into the force.

"I was going – I was going home, but then there suddenly was all this commotion." Adrian said, looking nervously from one Jedi to the other. "I figured it was a riot, so I... I tried to avoid it." He stuttered, but he looked much calmer now that the panic had dimmed into worry. "I had almost gotten around it when I ran right into this man. He had yellow eyes." Adrian paused and looked down with a worried expression.

"Go on."

"He just- walked up to me and raised his hand." Adrian's eyes narrow slightly and called the attention of the premature lines already folding out from the corners of his eyes. The signs of a hard life in one so young. "That is the last thing I remember."

"He…" Adrian stumbled again over his words. "I can't be sure" he bites his lip and looks away. "But it looked like he was leaving with a group of clone troopers when I-"

"Vader left with Clonetrooper's!" Anakin said a little too sharply in surprise and the man flinched back. The hand in his lap curled up as he too curled in on himself, to make himself look smaller. Anakin grimaced and his anger died in the force as though it was swallowed by a flood.

"He was with a lot of soldiers." Adrian said quickly, breathlessly. The fear was back in the man's eyes and Anakin must have seen it too because he visibly restrained himself and motioned for the man to continue with an exaggerated slow gesture. "...It looked like they were following his orders."

"How many are missing?" Windu asked the trooper at his side, who had the familiar light of a holo bathing his white armour in the soft colours. "Everyone is accounted for, except-" the clone trooper halts and listen intently to the message coming over the comm. "except..." He repeats and hesitates with a quick look at Anakin.

Anakin is on his feet in a second. Anakin ripped the holocom out of the Clonetropper's hand, and demand the answer from the other side of the line. In the next second his whole body froze on the spot.

"Rex!"

* * *

:::

This was not going as it should. He had been in enough negotiations to know when a deal was going south. But he did not understand why.

"Chancellor, I must object" She walked closer to the chancellor, her face was carefully blank, but there was something beneath it. He had known the Jedi master for long enough to know when something was bothering her. She would walk even straighter than she usually did and her face would become as expressive as a clay mask.

Just seeing that made his shoulder tense.

"Master Jedi, trust me, I will not be alone." Palatine answered. Unlike the Jedi, the chancellor was the very picture of calm.

The soldier could not put his finger on it, but there was something that just wasn't right about it.

"I have my security here." Palatine continued gesturing to commander Fox lingering behind him in the shadows. The presence of another clone should be a relief. It wasn't. "I want this soldier to feel he is having a fair say in this matter."

The soldier watched her leave the room with a feeling of dread growing in the pit of his stomach. The sight of her back leaving the room took all the remaining warmth he had in him.

* * *

:::

The glass cracked under his boot and shards scratched against the white stones of the floor as they were dragged behind the heavy cloak.

"You are right." Luke commented and stepped around what was left of what must have been a glass table. "You are an excellent shot." He tried with a careful smile at the soldier. He knew he used to be charming. Leia had always said that he had a very endearing smile.

The man did not answer as the rest of the mind-controlled soldiers fanned out around them. But then, why would he? It had not been an order. He had been forced to be here by an enemy that was pulling the strings on every move he made. If Luke let go of his concentration for just one moment, he was sure he would find a pair of hands around his neck or a blaster at his back.

Still there was a twinge of disappointment when the smile wasn't returned, and in a weak moment he stretched his senses towards the soldier, to force the reaction. He dropped the attempt immediately after a breath and continued out the door.

' _Stop tormenting yourself.'_ He thought, berating himself for almost indulging such to such base desires.

"The chancellor is clearly not here." He said shaking himself out of the moment of melancholy and addressed the commander directly as he fell in line behind Luke. "Where would they take him?"

"To the safe room most likely, but it does not make sense," The trooper answered in a professional manner. "They had no idea we would be here. They should not have moved him." The helmet tilted slightly, Luke's only clue to the man's thoughts.

"We just blasted a hole in the wall." Luke comments with a raised eyebrow before he could stop himself and resisted biting his cheek. He held no love for these sarcastic outbursts. They were a throwback to a person he used to be. Such things did not fit him now.

The soldier huffed. " _Now_ they know, but we flew below the radar." He tilted his head towards Luke, but with the helmet on Luke could only guess at his expression. His voice though was professional and firm. "It is very unlikely they would have seen us coming in time to evacuate."

"Then where is he?" Luke asked forgoing questioning the commander on how he knew this. Under Luke's influence he knew the soldier could not work against him. Luke kept the leash tight.

"I don't know..." The soldier answered with slight hesitation. "But not the safe room yet, I think." He sounded as certain as Luke had felt these past days. Which wasn't saying much. "You attacked the temple not the senate, there was no need to move him yet."

"Then what do you know that can help?" He asked, trying to bleed the sarcasm from his words all the while rechecking the bonds he had on the man through the force.

"We need to find him before he reaches the safe room." The soldier followed Luke through the door into the hall and in a gesture commanded his troops in front of them. "If he gets in there, then we can't touch him. It was designed to with stand almost anything."

" _Almost_ anything?" Luke repeated and savoured that last word with its many possibilities. It was a truth he already knew.

Everything could be broken.

"That does not sound like-"

"Stand down, or I shoot." The cold end of a blaster pressed firmly against Luke's temple and the sudden hand around his neck was unyielding. Through the corner of his eyes he could only see a blurry impression of the attacker.

The soldiers, that had moved at once when the voice shouted through the empty hall, halted almost in the same moment, looking to Luke for orders, which was a slow gesture. He dared not do anything else.

"Move an inch." The man dared and a hand shot out to pull Luke back into the alcove with him. The cold hit him before the dark, and the door that slammed close behind them. "You are the Sith that tried to kill the chancellor!"

"That door is made of wood." Luke said in a light tone, completely ignoring the words. "You think it will keep combat soldiers out?"

The man turned around and pushed Luke back against the door.

"Tell them to shoot then." The blaster moved from his temple to rest right between the eyes. "I dare you." The man said with a calm like he was a soldier himself, even it was clear by just one look that he was not.

He looked like a senator in his soft pristine clothes and neatly trimmed goatee. Luke instantly hated him, and it was not because of the blaster resting point-blank between his eyes.

He laughed. He could not help it. It was too ridiculous. Luke had faced more than one destroyer of worlds. The fact that this soft politician was actually threatening him was hilarious.

"What the hell are you laughing at?!"

"You will not fire at me." Luke said, and leaned casually back against the door. "In fact, I think you want to drop the blaster now."

The man froze and hissed in a breath. The hand holding the blaster was shaking violently, but he held on to it, if only barely. Reluctantly impressed, Luke let his mirth die.

"Drop it." He repeated, and he felt the mind war against his will. "Now."

The blaster was only halfway to the ground before it whipped into Luke's hand by a sharp command through the force. The man looked horrified, his hand immediately reached down for his belt and-

"Stop." Luke ordered, and watched the man do just that. Stopped everything. Luke briefly considers ordering him to stop breathing. He suppressed it violently and pushed the dark side at a distance as he breathes in heavily. "Open the door for me."

 _'Pull yourself together!'_ He thought and stepped back into the hall and the soldiers waiting for him.

"Where is the Chancellor?" Luke asked the new puppet with the empty eyes

"He went in the direction of the docking halls." He says in a detached voice. "Hall A I think, he said there was someone he needed to meet and that it could not wait."

"Why do you know this?"

"I am a senator." The eyes of the man were blank now, any sign of independent will was gone. "We were supposed to have a meeting and the chancellor cancelled at the last minute."

"I think the two of us are going to be great friends." Luke said pleasantly ignoring the futile resistance he met in the force. The man was strong willed. "Senator." He repeated. "Name?" It was a habit that made him ask, but the answer makes his heart miss a beat.

"Senator Bail Organa."

"…Organa?" He missed a breath, and his chest clenched painfully. In the dark corner of his heart he was starting to understand why the Sith in his own time had laughed. In a macabre way this was hilarious.

 _'It was not your fault.'_ A gentle voice told him from the memory he avoided like the plague. Luke did not believe it.

He had long since learned the consequences of telling lies to himself.

"What were you thinking?" Luke said rounding on the man with a sudden spark of hate. People were so eager to throw their lives away in this time. "One soft senator against how many professionally trained soldier." He didn't understand why he was suddenly this angry, the words flooded from him like they had taken a life of their own "Are you truly that arrogant, that irresponsible?"

That is as far as he got before a loud beeping rose from the commander's belt. Luke started and stared down at it with eyes narrowed, like the interruption was entirely the devices fault. The possibilities of who might be calling from the other side flashed briefly in his mind. None of the scenarios he stumbled upon dispelled the nervousness curling in his gut.

He held up his hand, warning the soldier not to obey the trained reaction to answer the call immediately. "Leave it-" He said. After a small eternity the insistent beeping finally stops and he breathed around the frustration as it faded with the noise

"What is the fastest way?" He asked banishing his anger even if the frustration lingered on. He knew the basic layout of the place, but the building was a monstrosity in itself and he could not for the life of him remember the location of docking halls.

There had been so many things that he needed to learn before coming back here to this time. The mappings of the battleship he knew he would end up on, the combatants he could risk running into and first and foremost the power and skill of the Sith he would risk encountering… and the Jedi of course, even if the latter had been difficult reading.

Luke had never enjoyed tragedies.

"You stick to this level at first" Organa said. "And then-"

Then the incessant beeping started again, and Luke's brows grew closer in a frown. He gritted his teeth and blocks the irritation of the noise out.

"Sir?" The leader of the troopers tries to call Luke's attention but Luke waved it off.

"Go on." He says with hard won patience but barely had he spoken, before the beeping started again.

"If I don't answer this. They will know for sure." The soldier said with little room for negotiation. Luke felt the rising frustration he could not keep from showing in his eyes, shifting his weight on his feet and strengthened the bonds on the soldier to the point where it should be physically painful, but he could not afford a slip-up now.

"Tell them everything is fine, that you tried to pursue me, but lost me in the streets." He said and backed out of range of the blue light of the holocom that flashed on with its soft artificial light. The shape that appeared was all too painfully familiar.

He resisted the temptation to glare when the shape of Anakin Skywalker emerged as a figure in the blue light, but he barely fought off the sudden helpless urge to laugh. He ground his teeth together, the force pulled at him as if to get him to move and he wanted nothing more than to obey.

His frustration did not spike as he expected it to as he witnessed the conversation unfold before him. Perhaps he simple could not feel more frustrated than he already was.

Maybe there was simply no more room for it in his head.

* * *

:::

The door slid closed and blocked the light from the room.

"Now" Palpatine said, his voice turned into a low rumble as he circled the soldier. "Where were we?"

* * *

:::

"Why is he not answering?!" Anakin mumbled to himself and pressed the button to repeat the call. A second time the tone started and stopped, and left him in unbearable silence once again.

"Rex, I swear by the force! If you do not-"

The blue light that rushed to fill the holocom silenced Anakin immediately by its mere presence, but the figure had barely been formed by the light by the time Anakin's questions were in the air.

"Where are you?" Anakin demanded. He knew he was letting his frustration and worry show, but the tension he felt in the force only grew and grew. It was like the very air was splitting apart.

"Everything is fine, Anakin." The image of Rex answered calmly, uncaringly, saying his first name like it was nothing.

Except Rex never used his first name.

The holocom groaned under the pressure when his metal hand close firmly around it. ' _What have you done now, Vader?'_ He thought and stared at the outliers of the projection, there was no sign of Vader, but that did not mean that he was not there, hiding in the dark like a coward! There was nothing he could see in the holocom that supported the growing feeling of wrongness in the force.

But he trusted his instincts. Vader was there on the other side, listening in.

"…Anakin?" He hears Obi-wan repeat behind him, but his eyes cannot detach from the projection of Rex looking back up at him.

"We tried to pursue the Sith into the streets, but we lost him." The reply was unflinching, but the sense of wrongness was so thick he felt like he should be choking on it.

"Where are you now?" He asked hopelessly. He knew it was a stupid, but he had to ask.

"We are coming back right away, _Anakin_." Rex said sounding as certain and reassuring as he always did. Only he repeated Anakin's first name again, the name that Rex refuses to use even in private. He even put a little extra pressure on it.

The holocom went out and Anakin was left with a cold sinking feeling.

"Does Commander Rex usually call you by your first name?" Windu asked when Anakin handed the holocom back to the clone trooper, but with the tone of his voice it did not sound like a question.

"No." Anakin and pressed his hand into a fist. "Damn it." The answer had been staring him right in the face and still he had allowed his anger to cloud his mind and had run like a fool towards the distraction that was dangled so temptingly right in front of him. "… a distraction." Anakin said in a whisper, as the horror of that realisation really sunk in. "I know where they are."

"What?" Obi-wan was beside him again, but the question was nothing more than background noise. Anakin was already moving before Obi-wan's hand locked around his upper arm. "Anakin-"

"What is the only thing Vader has been trying to do since we met him?"

* * *

::::

"He tried to kill me." The soldier could hear Palpatine's damning words behind him, his mind was reeling with the implications of what the chancellor had just told him on his own volition. Their leader was a traitor. "It was so sudden."

This was a massive deception. The nightmare scenarios his mind had conjured up on the way here did not even hold a candle to the truth. This was genocide waiting to happen. It could mean the end of the Jedi. He had to find somebody that would believe him.

Anyone.

* * *

:::

Something was wrong.

Luke could feel it. It was a nagging in the back of his mind, the feeling of doubt.

There was a stab of something that felt like a warning through the force the minute the blue light of the holocom flickered off. He told Organa to stay in the broken office, he could not bear to look at him, and they left the hall behind at a brisk pace.

The suspicion persisted, and became even more stifling as they travelled the abandoned halls.

He tried to ignore it. _'You are getting paranoid, Luke.'_ His mind supplied unhelpfully and he followed the soldiers down another hall. The short exchange between his father and the soldier whose name he now knew to be Rex replayed over and over again in his mind.

Rex had said exactly what he had ordered him to. Still, the doubt persisted, like a high pitched scratching at the back of his mind.

He increased his pace down the abandoned hall. His senses went to all sides to catch a glimpse of the elusive sith. The more times the response that came back to him a blank nothing, the harder his heart pounded. His eyes strayed to a silent clock hanging on the wall as he passed it, he had barely looked before he regretted it.

 _Why had he even done that?_

The way to the lift was as short as it was worrying. The absence of people became increasingly louder in his mind. There should be people around but this entire floor was cleaned out. He turned his hand towards a camera as they bolted past and crushed it into oblivion without breaking his run.

He wondered what eyes were looking at them from the other side of those cameras or if anyone was looking at them at all. 'What is going on?' He just blasted the chancellor's office to pieces and no one batted an eye?

Then finally, he sensed a presence in front of them. The very one he almost snuffed out twice now, but it was far away. He rechecked the bonds he has on his escorts, and wished he hadn't a second later. His control was already fraying at the edges, and all he had done thus far was running around.

Then there are steps, and the sound of blaster fire in the distance. Luke forced himself not to count his puppets again.

"Cover." He said to them instead of doing what he really wants to do, run ahead and finish it.

 _'Patience'_ he commands himself and the force gathers around him. Barely a minute later a man bolted past them. It was a clone trooper with no helmet, and his eyes are wide and unseeing. Luke lets him run. He waits for the second one in line that must come running.

But no one followed.

The hall was empty.

The holocom beeped again, and Rex moved to answer it before Luke could command him not to. For some explicable reason, he took his helmet off.

"There has been an attempt on the Chancellors life." Rex said with a straight face, like that is not exactly what they were about to do.

"We haven't even gotten there yet." He protested. As if Rex has not heard him, he continued.

"They say it is a clone trooper." There is a look of disgust in Rex's eyes.

Luke whipped around after the trooper that disappeared down the hall. _'They say it is a clone trooper.'_ Echoed once again in his mind once again.

The force screamed back at him suddenly, the sense of wrongness coming from the force was so thick he felt he might just be able to cut through it with his lightsabre.

"Put down your weapon!" Rex yelled his hands was almost faster that his words as his gun was up at the level of his eyes in a movement so quick that Luke did not see it happen. The other hand shoved Luke behind him, out of reach of the enemy that had just entered the hall.

She was a silhouette against the light coming from the bright lamps in the ceiling on the other side of the hall, lamps that for some reason were more brightly lit than the rest. _'Jedi'_ his senses told him, and one with considerable power.

What was more worrying, she was an unknown, one of the hundreds of Jedi forgotten to history after the clone wars. He knew nothing of her, but he had fought the others, Jedi or not, that had.

She should be no problem.

"Sith" She breathed as he pushed Rex aside.

"Shall we shoot, sir?"

"Can you from here?" Luke asked without moving his eyes a fraction from the Jedi. He somehow doubted the effectiveness of a blaster against a Jedi because even with as little training as he had had, blasters were a nuisance more than a threat.

"If she is distracted, sir."

Luke nodded in understanding and stepped out of the half circle formed by the soldiers. He tried to ignore the feeling of comfort that rose from having someone to stand at his back, even if it was someone who was forced.

 _'Kriff!'_ He swore at himself. By the force he had become pathetic! He kept the frustration clear in mind as he walked up to the Jedi. He stopped when there was still space between them.

She appeared calm in the force, this unfamiliar Jedi, but it was like it was painted on rather than soaked through her entire being.

"I don't know who you are stranger, but there can be no doubt about your allegiance." Her saber rose in a guard. Luke had mimicked it before he registered his hands doing it. It was the same thing (the same move) that Obi-Wan had made when he met Vader.

He registered a sound, the click of something metallic snapping off and then there was only pain. A numbed spike in his shoulder as his world tilts and the ground rushed up to meet him. The pain flared and he choked on air trying to just breathe as his fingers clawed and twisted against the ground and his back to where the pain was blinding

 _'My back!'_ He breathed around the pain but the very air in his lungs was liquid fire ' _They shot me in the back!'_

Then there was nothing.

The celling was suddenly staring back at him when he opened his eyes, it moved above him until it came to a harsh stop. There was blaster fire, but it sounded like it was worlds away and he was hearing the noise through water.

What had just happened?

His eyes closed slowly, and he felt weightless.

"They are locking down the building." He heard Rex above him and thanked the force that he had held on to the connection so tight. His strengthening focus wrapped around that thought and the weakness that was already showing in his control of the soldiers became as it had been before "If we don't go now, we won't get out."

Luke knew it was a lie. The force told him so even before he managed to get his shaking limbs under him. The hailstorm of blaster fire fell hard. He knew no one was getting out. He had been in enough lost battles to know this.

His hand reached back, the pain was numbed for now and there was no wetness found by his searching fingers. It was a stun they hit him with. Luckily. It was a clean shot. If it had been live ammo he doubted he would have survived it.

"For what it is worth. I am sorry." He said to Rex as he painfully got his breathing under control. "You will not surrender, not for anything." He ordered and felt a part of himself detach and bleed away from his very self. It sounded like cracking glass, but softer. "You will cover my escape until you are no longer capable of doing so…or until I am out. Set your blasters to stun"

 ** _'Do you understand now?.'_** The memory of voice whispered loud and demanding. Luke let the voice drown in the sea of voices he barely contained.

' _It will not come to that!'_ He insisted in his mind at the gleeful voice.

It would _not_

* * *

:::

The wind had died down when he slipped outside. The breeze that was flowing into the darker streets of the city cooled the final rays of the sun that was nothing like the suns of Tatooine.

The shadow cast from the tall walls of the alley he stumbled into were uncomfortably cold. He did not close the cloak around himself. This kind of cold was insignificant.

It was with a muted observation that he witnessed the chaos surrounding the building.

He felt in the back of his mind that most of his little strings were still intact, that meant some of his stolen soldiers were still fighting. He hesitated for a moment, the he let his leash unravel. He tried not to enjoy the pain of it, and banished the dark side that kept whispering sweet things into his ear.

 _'This has been a disaster'_ he thought to himself. This attempt had been a worthy gamble, but he could not afford to make another. Sidious was heavily guarded. Too heavily, and after this he doubted that the man would ever be without an impressive bodyguard again.

Assassination was off the table… for now. But there was more than one way to skin a snake. There had to be. He breathed out in a hard push and leaned more heavily against the wall.

' _What do I do now?'_ He needed a new plan.

A speeder rushed past him, the engine loud as it passes and the wind it had created tugged at his cloak. The noise faded as the speeder settles into a quick landing in front of the senate. The person that jumped off the speeder was wearing a distinctive brown robe.

Jedi.

It was with a strange detachment that he noticed this and he followed the figure with his eyes as it rushed into the building. The cold from the wall seeped through the fabric and lay like cold fingers against his back. The scars on his arm stung lightly as if in response to the Jedi disappearing into the building.

Soon others followed.

It was disheartening to witness the massive size of the reinforcements that hurried to the site. It made his heart sink with guilt. All of these ignorant people with an axe hanging over their heads might still die, because he failed to do one simple task.

One single kill

 _'Pain is only surface'_ he reminded himself when the familiar guilt blossomed in his heart. He looked away, and it was in that weakness that he spotted something moving away from the building. Someone he caught a glimpse at just before.

The clone trooper that rushed by their position.

 _'They say it is a clone trooper.'_

The force had a very vocal reaction. It shoved against him so hard in his mind that he actually stumbled.

 **Follow**

The word was loud and imposing in his mind. It does not sound human or humanoid for that matter. It sounded… other, and it echoed in the force all around him. It was more an image carved into him, than sound itself. The force had never spoken to him like this before.

In his hesitation, he could see the clone trooper hardwire a speeder and move to get up on it. His eyes never strayed from the entrance to the senate. His moves were erratic and the hands that reached for the controls were shaking.

The word remains as an echo that instead of fading became louder and louder, knife-sharp and undeniable, and Luke obeyed

* * *

:;;;;

 _ **To be continued**_

As always, a special thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta :)


	13. What greater weapon is there?

Author's note:

Hi everyone Happy Halloween :) Here is the next chapter.

A special thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta.

* * *

 **Chapter 13** -" _What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause?"— Bastila Shan_

* * *

 _"I still doubt that you will be able, to commit the act, when the time comes." The Sith was pleased sharing this, Luke could tell by the way there was a spike in the force._

 _"Don't look at me like that." The smile widened enough to show a glimpse of yellow teeth "There is little shame in it, many have failed before." The Sith moved its right hand restlessly, as if the hand had lost its purpose without the knife, even if there were still dark lines painted on the skin of his hands between the fingers, heavy and dark like scars._

 _"You don't need to worry about that." Luke said, thankful for the unexpected gift. The pleasure of telling the Sith what he was going to do to its face. "I am not who I was before." He continued and knew this was the true path. Anakin's attraction to the dark side had to be strangled in its cradle. "I have killed over a million people"._

 _And he had been happy about doing it. He had had every right to be. Left to roam, the Death Star could have wiped out entire civilizations in a heartbeat. In time it could have destroyed entire systems, and carved a void into the galaxy._

 _But there had been consequences despite his best intentions. Because intentions did not matter in the force. There were no grey areas. There was the dark and there was the light. Evil, was evil._

 _And he was the most famous mass-murderer in the galaxy._

 _"And I came here with the intention of killing at least one more."_

* * *

Luke had travelled back in time for a second time.

He was sure of it.

He blinked again, assured that his eyes were playing games with him, but the scenery did not change. The bar the clone trooper had finally stopped in front of had looked like nothing special… until he went inside.

The only other time he had seen so many white armours and grey uniforms in one place, was a battlefield. The sound was deadening and distorted but even in the coloured flashing lights there were no mistaken those uniforms.

He felt like he just gate-crashed a party on a Star-Destroyer.

There were **that** many soldiers.

He caught himself staring too long at a naval lieutenant who stumble past, clearly already drunk even if it was still early in the evening. The man's uniform was a mess, but for a moment Luke could not take his eyes off him. He had rarely ever seen an imperial officer this close. Alive that is. He had caught plenty of storm troopers during the war, but extremely rarely an officer.

They usually… made sure they weren't captured alive. Having met Vader, Luke somewhat understood that choice. He had had a similar reaction himself.

He shook his head and slipped through the crowd, _'Don't notice me'_ whispered through the force as his eyes wandered in the search of the trooper that just slipped the hook. It was like finding a needle in a pile of needles. A seemingly impossible task.

But he had done the impossible before.

* * *

"Run this by me again Rex." Anakin said, he couldn't wrap his head around it. "I have never heard of anyone using force persuasion like this…"

"Theoretically it is possible." Obi-Wan cut in. Anakin felt the frustration move under his carefully constructed façade, but he allowed the interruption. This debriefing was going nowhere _knew_ , just like Obi-Wan should, that what Vader had done should be impossible, but they had both seen it happen this day.

"It would take an extreme amount of control and a considerable potential in the force to back it up, I know." Obi-wan continued addressing everyone in the room. At the end he shifted his gaze to Windu and Yoda. "But it _is_ possible."

"In your own professional opinion?" Windu asked, his expression a constant frown like always. Anakin could not for the life of him remember ever seeing him smile.

Ever.

"I have never heard of it being done on this scale, and for so long." Obi-Wan answered carefully. "But it should be possible, as we have just seen the evidence today."

"Indeed." Windu replied, somehow able to pronounce the word as a question with his eyes shifting to Rex. The constant frown deepened.

"Maybe he wasn't doing it on his own." Obi-wan speculated out loud. "There was something about Vader's force signature that felt...off." He made a weak gesture. "It is hard to explain, but it was like his signature in the force was out of sync with his own body."

"Felt this too, I did." Yoda commented, his expression folded into a thoughtful one. "Peculiar, young Vader feels." His eyes strayed to Anakin, and he knew exactly what he was thinking of "Meditate on this, I must."

The holo in the middle of the room repeated its cycle. The image of Anakin clashing with Vader replayed for a second time before them. Or rather…. Anakin's duel with the civilian Adrian Walker, a mildly force sensitive bartender. He had had no training in the force whatsoever.

It bothered Anakin still. Adrian's force signature was a little above average, but still so little that it should not have been able to produce the fighting manoeuvres he had displayed under Vader's possession.

"Commander, I know recent this is, but describe how Vader controlled you, you can?" Yoda asked, and stared for a moment longer at the projection before he moved his eyes to meet Rex's exhausted ones.

Rex's stiff form relaxed minutely when Yoda spoke to him. Yoda always had a calming effect on the troopers, Anakin had noticed this on more than one occasion.

"It was strange… most of the time, I did not notice something was wrong. It was like Vader had convince me that he was my friend. " Rex paused and added quietly like he did not really mean to "I actually believed he was." He shook his head and his eyes strayed to Anakin. "It was first when I talked to you, sir that the fog lifted for a moment."

"How much do you remember?" Anakin asked trying not to sound angry, but he could feel the frustration he was barely containing within. Too much had already happened this day. He needed to get Vader and close this investigation fast, so he could move to deal with the really important thing that had happened today.

He sighed inside and breathed in to centre himself. Just the thought of Padmé released some of the heavy tension in his shoulders.

"All." Rex answered like he had just taken an injury, unaware that Anakin's mind had drifted. Anakin forced himself to concentrate. Rex released his breath in a huff. "So feel free to ask away, sir."

Obi-Wan stared at the holo projection, there was a slight frown forming between his eyes. Anakin instantly didn't like it. That expression had become entirely too familiar on his old mentor. The expression he always had favoured before only left little lines at the corner of his eyes.

Anakin did not know why he only realized this just now. He watched as Obi-wan sighed, looking older than he was and straightened."Rex, where do you think Vader-"

"Why stun?" The question escaped Anakin suddenly, unbidden, and sounded a lot stronger than he wanted it to. Obi-wan shot him a look, but he did not say anything to the interruption.

"Sir?" Rex asked, but the moment after he had spoken Anakin could see the sudden realization in his eyes. "He ordered us not to kill, sir" And added as an afterthought. "He was very insistent on it. Just as he insisted that we stayed alive at all cost."

"Why?" Mace Windu, moved from his position against the wall, his steps measured and seemingly marred by a suppressed wrath. "What could he possibly get out of that?"

"I don't know, Sir. He did not tell me." Rex shifted on his feet, uncertainty shone back at Anakin through the force.

"Anything you can tell us about Vader is important." Anakin said, trying to reassure the veteran soldier and to his satisfaction he saw the uncertainty start to fade.

"It might not mean anything. But he looked like he was mortified at what he was doing to us and…" he sighed an odd sense of resigned hopelessness echoed in the force from him. "He apologized to me… and he meant it."

"Lied, Vader could have." Yoda said, but only presented it as a possibility, he did not look like it was what he himself believed.

"I know what people look like when they lie, sir."

"Bail Organa told me Vader had yelled at him for being irresponsible." Windu said suddenly like he did not like his own words. Windu had never liked things that did not make sense, neither did Anakin if he was honest. Windu shook his head and the frown that had taken up permanent residence on his face deepened. "Senator Organa said Vader appeared genuinely furious about it."

Anakin's thought came around form another loop of reasons that Vader could have to do this, and once again came back empty. None of the threads connected.

A separatist agent on an assassination mission would _not_ stop the clone troopers from shooting each other full of holes. That would be immensely stupid. A Sith, whatever his allegiance, would also _not_ care about casualties. Furthermore, a Sith would certainly not apologize for using the dark side and mean it.

And why actually _yell_ at Senator Organa like that?

Despite himself he felt a little on the old eagerness alight inside his chest. He always enjoyed a puzzle, if only the stakes had not been so high this time. It was so long since he applied his detective skills like this.

"Stop." Obi-wan was suddenly at the controls to the holo, his fingers moved fast as the holo rewound, and froze. Anakin was on the ground face down, above him was Vader, the vibro blade in his hand raised like an executioner's axe. Obi-wan straitened "Watch, what Vader does." He said and set the holo to play again, but in slow motion.

Anakin stepped into the blue light, it reflected on the lightsaber in his belt as he leaned in, prepared to catch the obscure detail Obi-wan must have picked up. Only the detail presented itself quite boastfully, like it was somehow proud that it had avoided detection after so many repetitions.

When Vader's blade dove, its sharp edge was gleaming in the sunlight, but Anakin instantly saw what he could not have seen the first time with his back turned. "Did he just… turn the blade?"

The image froze. Standing there in clear view was Vader striking down at Anakin's exposed back, but the blade had been deliberately turned so that if it had hit him, it would have been with the blunt harmless side instead of the deadly sharpened one.

"That does not make any sense." Anakin said, shaking his head and not believing what his eyes were telling him. "That's…" The unfinished sentence hung in the air. He had felt murderous intent from Vader, even if he now had to admit to himself that the feed-back that he had got from Vader had felt distorted. Like static on a frequency, that blocked part of a message out.

"A Sith that does not kill…" Windu mutters more to himself than anyone else. "And here I thought that I had seen everything.

"Wait." Rex was suddenly there beside Anakin. "Play it again, sir." Obi-wan's fingers moved fast over the controls and the fight started again from the beginning. Rex's gaze was fixed on Vader as they ran though the now familiar fight pattern. "The way he moves… is that not familiar to any of you?"

There was shock coming from Rex in waves, through the force.

"Should it be?" Anakin asked but turned back to the fight replaying on the holo. It was a strange mix of most of the Jedi combat forms. It should not have worked as fluently as Vader somehow made it do. "What are you seeing Rex?"

A click and the recording stopped. The image of Vader clashing with Anakin was suspended frozen between them. "The way he fights, moves and strikes. I was taught the same thing."

"Excuse me?" Obi-wan stares at Rex as if he suddenly sprouted a second head. Anakin doubts his own expression is much different.

Rex is unmoved by the stares, there is only certainty glaring back at him defiantly though the force. It is not a comfort and Anakin does not like the sudden stillness in Windu's posture.

"Rex-"

"This is the way I learned to fight in close combat. It is the way all clone troopers learn to fight" Rex starts the recording again. Vader on the screen dodged a strike and follows up with a counterattack in a move that suddenly looks uncomfortably familiar. "Aside from a few Jedi moves, he fights exactly like a clone trooper."

"Rex, that's impossibl-"

"Exactly like a clone trooper, sir." Rex's expression was carved in stone, but in the force Anakin could feel the implication of that possibility sink in. The thought of an unknown traitor crossed Rex's mind, and the though was lined with guilt. Rex had a habit of blaming himself, even for something out of his control.

Anakin considered this thought. A traitor trooper. But what would the point be of training a Sith to fight like a combat soldier in close combat? The Sith had their own combat training.

There was a nagging in the back of his head, it was the feeling he got when he had missed something, something important. Whatever it was, it kept itself hidden from him.

Instead he was only getting more questions

* * *

"So, I guess the 501st are back on Coruscant." The door closed behind him and his heart thundered loudly into his ears. He had to make this work. If he could only get in contact with the commander and explain this-

"Oh yeah… we just got back from Ringo Vinda, strangest thing happened out there." The trooper still has his back to him, staring at himself in the mirror.

"Yeah.. I know." Fives says, trying to find a way to explain now that the time has come. He knows how insane this will sound. ' _How can I possibly explain?'_ He thinks, and the panic starts to move again. Then the soldier looks up and spots him through the reflection in the mirror.

The man moves like he was hit by lightning, spins around and freezes on the spot.

"Fives?"

* * *

Luke was getting nowhere

The room was so poorly lit that it was a struggle to identify one person from the other. It was a sea of uniforms under the many screens littering the walls. The red neon light carved into the ceiling was mixed with blue light giving everything a purple tint. The stench of alcohol and spices lay thick in the air.

The dancefloor was packed, even if only a few had any dancing skill worth mentioning. Luke stopped against the wall taking in the sight and scent, the force looking for the man he followed here. The noise of the voices talking was louder than the music, that was a simple monotone bass that echoed everywhere in the room.

The naval officers were easily recognized and they were filtered away from his search with hardly a thought. Their minds were not hard to locate. The minds of the clone troopers on the other hand felt exactly the same with their gaping open force signature. It made it hard to tell one from the other.

A warning spiked behind him in the force and he quickly slipped into the shadows. A second later five clone troopers walked in through the entrance. Their armour was white but painted red in places that must have marked them as something different than the regulars. Luke did not know what that signified.

Were they some sort of elite?

"Have you seen this clone?" Luke hears them question a man standing by the entrance. A holocom lights up in the trooper's hand. That is not what catches Luke's attention though. It is the man in the middle of the room that freezes at the sight. Luke is only more sure when the man reaches a hand up, seemingly to straighten his hat, but really is just a move to hide his face.

"Erhhh… No Sir." The man answers at the entrance, but it is only background noise to him now. "I haven't seen him."

There was a flicker in the force that made him completely certain this was the same trooper he saw hours before. That, and the fact that no clone trooper he had ever heard of had worn the uniform hat of a naval commander. ' _One that was sober that is'_ He thought when his eye caught something in the drunk crowd that he doubted he would ever forget.

He never knew that clone troopers could be that flexible.

Correction: he didn't **want** to know clone troopers could be that flexible

He visibly shook himself and followed the trooper out, keeping his eyes fixed on the man that made quick work at slipping past the newcomers. If it had been Luke leading the team, then the trooper he was following would not have left the bar, but the team in the red uniform had not even posted a guard at the entrance.

A beginner's mistake.

Cold air brushed against his face as he followed the man back outside. Then he realized his mistake when he spotted one of the troopers in the red uniform right outside. He was in conversation with two other clone troopers.

The trooper Luke was following noticed the man too. Luke could tell easily, because the man stopped halfway through a step and eyed the speeders lined up at the entrance.

Luke watched as the man neared the speeder, his intent could not be clearer in the force. Luke resisted reacting to it.  
He wanted nothing more than to end the chase here and find out why this man was so important, but the same urge that first told him to follow this trooper made him hesitate now. The force told him to wait.

Understanding little, he allowed himself to trust in the force one last time.

The trooper in the red markings stopped, his head snapped around to keep the clone trooper in his sight. His hand is already reaching for the holocom when Luke's hand falls on his armoured shoulder.

"That is not the clone you are looking for." He says extending his force presence gently.

"…that is not the clone I am looking for."

"I can carry on."

"You can carry on." The clone trooper dismissed Luke as unimportant with a slight wave and yelled at a pair that was leaving the bar. "You two! Stop!"

Not wanting to ruin his good luck, Luke made his way to one of the taxis parked a few steps away. It was a long line and the taxi waiting at the front looked like it had been through a war as long as the one Luke came from. But there was some charm to its damaged appearance.

"Are you going to pay?" The taxi driver spat out like anyone else would have in a curse. He did not even look at Luke as he took a seat in the back.

"No." Luke answered casually while getting more comfortable in the backseat. "But you won't mind."

"I won't mind!" The alien twisted in his seat his eyebrows raised so high that they seem a part of his hairline. "What do you think this is-"

"Follow that speeder." Luke ordered without looking at the driver. The man stiffened, then turn back facing the steering-wheel and obeyed. During the drive Luke's control on the alien's mind was constant, it had to be. When he tried to relieve the pressure a bit, he could feel the aliens mind rebel against his leach.

That was worrisome.

Either the alien's mind was strong, or he was getting tired.

The short time he spends in the speeder was largely uneventful; he did not really bother to study the city around him as he did not plan to stay much longer anyway. He didn't want to notice anything that might prove to be a distraction.

The taxi stopped besides an older building. It looks an industrial area, if the large grey buildings are anything to judge by. It is not one of the finer ones by his guessing, the walls just beside him is damaged by the elements and the smell that hangs in the air is one of mild decay.

The lights on the taxi are both broken and for that Luke is grateful. The trooper could otherwise not have avoided seeing them. But in the end the trooper sees nothing as he disappeared inside a large storage building, and leaves his stolen vehicle outside.

 _'Not used to being on the run'_ Luke noted with a silent observation, not sure what to do with that. The clumsiness was almost endearing.

Almost.

"I will leave you now." He told the taxi driver. "Thank you for your time. Go back where you came from." He waved the man with little care, their time spent together is already forgotten.

Then Luke feels a resistance in the force.

"Your mother is a droid!" the taxi driver bites and takes off with a roar of the engine.

 _'What-"_ Luke startled and could for a moment only blink and stare after the departing taxi. The insult hung unanswered in the air. Luke collected himself, scoffed and shook his head as he then turned to the building. Despite the force control the man clearly managed to speak his mind.

"Droid…" he mutters and shakes his head again.

The moon is high above him, lighting up the night sky in a pale blue light, which makes the night seem colder than it is. Not as cold as the wall that feels like it is covered with frost.

The frost bite against his skin as he scales the building easily enough. Red light shows his path as he steps down on the roof and ignites the lightsaber with a causal movement. The glass gave compliantly under the blade as he cuts through one of the windows of the roof.

The cut was swift and certain and formed a clean unbroken line. The cut up piece floated up to meet his open hand that curls around it. He discarded it on the roof beside him, it landed slowly and carefully on the surface, not because he cared for the glass in any way other than the sound it could make if it broke.

The night was darker on the inside of the building when he left the light of the moon behind. The ground he has landed on is a wide beam that stretched across the hall. In this darkness he cannot see where it ends, Reflections of small yellow, green and red light shone back at him from below in the greater cargo hall.

It was the trace of cold fear in the force that drew him to the lone silhouette in the middle of the cargo hall. If the pacing was anything to go by the soldier was more than just a little bit nervous. The fragility of it stirred something within him, but he could not act on it.

He avoided emotion at all costs. It made him act recklessly.

The feelings broadcasted from him through the force is misery and fear. Underneath there is the tiniest feeling of hope.

Luke watched as the clone trooper suddenly turned walked swiftly to a console on the other side of the room. He bent down and collected something that was out of Luke's sight. He caught a glimpse of a square black thing that did not look at all like a blaster and he did not feel any aggression from the man at all.

Luke resisted scratching his head because it just might give him away. The trooper was twisting around to every sound. Luke judged the distance, wondering how he was going to get closer withou being detected when he felt someone approaching.

Two someone's.

The clone trooper noticed a moment after Luke and dived into the closest hiding spot, clutching the little black box like his life depended upon it. Luke kept his attention locked on the door. There was something about one the two presences he felt through the force. One of them felt like a supernova, like he could barely contain all the power he had.

Then a shadow fell through the gap of the door and a figure walked in. It was another clone trooper, but the man walking behind him wasn't.

It was Anakin!

They are on edge. Luke did not need the force to realize this. Their movements are tense and hands never strayed too far from their weapons. The opening in the trooper's mind was clear and Luke calls the force to him. The power lingered at the tip of his fingers while his eyes follow the two's traverse into the dark hall.

The agitation and fear only grows from the opposite side. The fear so intense that he can feel it like an uncomfortable itch on his skin. The cold handle of the lightsaber is a great comfort in his hands as he crouches down.

The steps click against the floor. The echoes against the walls try to fool the listener into believing that there are more than just the two pairs of marching feet. The sound has a clear effect on the trooper. The fear is so loud that Luke can almost taste it.

From his position above them, Luke could see the entire scene. The clone trooper he followed here grabbed something and dove behind a large crate.

Anakin and the clone trooper are ready to grab for their weapons. They come nearer the trooper hiding in the dark. Luke can feel the determination spark in the force from both Anakin and the clone trooper when they closed in.

Luke missed the first words when the troopers' voice rings out against the walls. He rises slowly to his feet and starts walking carefully down the beam, his feet make no sound at all. The force collected around him blocked the noise out.

"We have." Anakin's recognizable voice answers from the dark as Luke starts to move ever so slowly closer to the inevitable confrontation. They are just below him now, just on the other side of a large shelf filled to the brim with boxes of different shapes and sizes.

"Put down your weapons then." Is the sharp reply from the trooper. The fear that Luke feels from the trooper cannot be heard in the quick command.

 _'He is a soldier.'_ Luke reminds himself. _'He is trained to work in stressful situations.'_ Luke lowers himself slowly off the beam, his feet brush the box before he lets go and lands with little sound. The cold surface is so cold it stings his hands when he crouches down.

"I don't think so, Fives." Anakin answers. Luke sneaks a peak over the box he is hiding behind and catches a glimpse of Anakin and the commander standing back to back. Their eyes scanning the dark surrounding them.

"Please sir." The voice yelled back now more subdued "I am unarmed."

Luke narrow his eyes at that, a nervous eagerness had suddenly replaced the thick fear in the force. A second later the light disappears when the blue lightsaber is turned off.

"Alright, I am putting my pistols down." The man says and there is something about that voice that Luke cannot put his finger on. Like he heard it before. He sees the shape of the trooper that came here with his father walk to a nearby box with two pistols held over his head. He hears the click when they are left on the metal surface.

'Rex!' Luke thought, recognizing the figure in the force. He remembered very well the strength of the mind and mind-control was always harder the second time around. 'No matter.' He thought and willed away the doubt. 'He is still no match for me.'

"What are we here for Fives?" Anakin asked. He sounded calm and felt calm through the force. Anakin must trust this man, despite the current circumstances.

"I need your help." The trooper that Anakin called Fives answered, just below Luke on the high shelf. Luke resisted the urge to look down, he knows he will see nothing from this angle and the force is a much better guide than his eyes in this darkness.

"I know you do." Anakin says with such a light air that it sounded close to condescending, even if that was not Anakin's intent. "We know you are not well… it has been rough for you theses couple of days-"

"I am not crazy!" The desperation in those words spiked so violently that Luke startled on top of the shelf. His hand slipped forward on the surface until he regained himself and ripped it back. He swallows.

 _'That made a lot of noise!'_ He thought in panic, and his heartbeat was suddenly so loud it was impossible that the three below could not hear it. _'Did they-'_

"Just, Please, please." Fives continues from beneath and Luke breathed out in relief and he relaxed his clammy hands. "Hear what I have to say." Fives said.

A shadow moves beneath Luke, it reached out towards Anakin and Rex. Soon following after is the trooper he had followed here. _'Fives',_ he reminds himself.

"We are here to help you Fives, just come with us. Let us take you back to the temple"

The noise is slight. If Luke had not already been focusing on the spot he would not have heard the beeping sound coming from just beneath him.

Luke gasps and clings to the shelf. A forcefield jumped from the celling just beside him in a flash of white. A roar that sound like a distorted 'NO!' echoes from the inside.

Anakin's raised fist leaves no delusion about where that roar came from. The anger in the force was sharp and almost painful in its intensity before it is numbed into restrained irritation, but there still no fear.

The absence of any fear in such a vulnerable position made Luke unwilling raise an eyebrow in wonder and an uncomfortable tight feeling start clenching in his chest. He banishes the feeling violently into the memory he never dares visit.

"I just need you to listen to me!" The voice of Fives said below, and it becomes louder as the man pushed free of his hiding place as he stepped out into the open. "Please."

"I am not really sure that we have any other choice!" The anger from Anakin is unavoidable to feel in the force and it expresses itself in his violent gestures. Unseen by them all, Luke starts to move. His hands move to the edge and he begins to descend.

"I was framed. Because I know the truth."

 _'That is not a lie'_ Luke thinks and feels the honesty undeniable in the force before the words fade between the many rows of racks reaching all the way to the celling. He continues the climb down, careful about where he places his feet as the conversation continues below.

"The truth about a plot. A massive deception."

"By who?" The trooper besides Anakin ask. He sounds firm and serious, but not angry.

"A sinister plot-" the words drown out against the racks. "Jedi." Is the only word Luke can make out from the voice that sounds more and more breathless. Panic is starting to set in.

"I have proof of it!" Fives almost yells now "I can prove that everything I know is true beyond the shadow of a doubt!"

"Show me the evidence." Anakin demands back more calmly than before. Luke descend the final distance until his feet touched the ground without the slightest whisper of a sound

"The… evidence is… here." Fives stutters then his voice lathes on to some hope and it becomes firmer, more assured. "It is in here. It is in all of us, in every clone."

"What is it?"

"Organic chips built into our genetic code." He sounds calmer now, more sure, and there is only truth beaconing through the force. "To make us do whatever someone wants. Even kill the Jedi." It's all in here."

 _'Even kill the Jedi'_ the words loop in Luke's mind along with what they mean.

Luke feels the cold of the floor bleed though the clothes from where his knees rest against the ground. He sees Fives with his back to Luke pointing at his own head. The trooper inside the forcefield touches his own head in wonder. In horror Luke reacted before he registers doing in. He reaches out, searching the truth of the words from this unhinged person.

 **Truth** is the only impression that roars back at him.

Fives is not lying, no matter how mad he seems right now. _'Even kill the Jedi'_ he thinks again like it is stuck replaying in his mind in a constant whisper. This was why there was no one left 20 years from now.

Genocide.

"Let's just get you some help first." Anakin says moving his hand in a slow placating gesture. "We will review everything. You will be okay Fives, we will sort this out."

That on the other hand was a lie, and Luke did not need the force to know that.

Neither did Fives.

"YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME!" Desperation and panic mix together in a choir so loud through the force that Luke only just managed to stop himself from covering his ears.

"Fives we are listening to you... We only want to help."

"How do I know you are not tricking me? Who do I know it won't be a trap? The chancellor tried to kill me. I promise you that!"

"The chancellor?"

 _'Someone is coming!'_ The warning screams through the force. With his force connection wide open like this it was like someone was screaming directly into his ear. He shook his head and turned it solely in the direction of the new threat. He dared only move very slowly as his hand moved toward his lightsaber.

"He is in on it. I don't know to what extent but I know he orchestrated much of it. He told me in the medical bay." Fives continues, but Luke does not dare move back to look. There are many force signatures closing in, at least Five of them. They had the same mutilated force signature of clone troopers.

' _The red troopers then?'_ He thought as his hand close around the cold handle of the blade. The saber is still too unfamiliar, and somehow too small for someone who had become used to wielding a weapon made for a much taller fighter. ' _Fine. I will deal with you first.'_

"He told you?" When you tried to **assassinate** him?!" Anakin's voice is loud and angry. "You have gone too far Fives. The chancellor is incapable of doing what you claim!"

 _'Interesting._ ' Luke crooked his head despite himself, honing his powers for a moment to focus on his distraught father. Under the sudden anger, the hidden reaction to the trooper's words was a gnawing fear.

Then there was movement in the dark. Luke freezes, and his fingers tighten around the handle of the blade. His heart starts hammering in his chest and the force struggle against his iron control.

"He is!" Fives were practically screaming. "I tell you sir! You have no idea!"

The three had seen nothing when a voice roar through the hall. "STAND DOWN!" Not before Fives whip around just to see the five soldiers rushing down towards him. Their red armour glaring through the dark. In this dim light the red markings look almost like blood. "GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!"

"No…NO!" Fives screams the last and suddenly there is a gun in his hand. "Stay back!"

"Don't do it soldier!"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

Red flashes to light from the soldier's gun, it alight like a supernova in the blackened hall and the shot closes the distance in the blink of an eyes. The path is unmistakable and the smell of death and burnt flesh is only a second away.

The red light glaring from the shot bathes Fives face; tightened up in the fear of pain, the sizzling sound is loud and it sound like thunder as it echoed against the walls. Fives raises his hands in defence, the gun in his hands forgotten.  
Seconds pass.

The pain does not come.

Fives shaking hands lower, and the deadly shot is there, still, hanging in the air as if it was on a string. It is barely a hands length away from his heart.

"What?" Fives steps back from the frozen blaster shot, almost enough to hit his back against the force field.

"Don't move." Suddenly there is a shape between Fives and the blaster shot. Luke stood there like he had materialized out of thin air, his hand is still raised as he comes up to the force field. Fives stumbles back, out of reach realizing too late he left his weapon on the floor.

"Who the kriff are yo-"

"Stop." Luke commands in a voice not much louder than a whisper. Fives freezes immediately like he had just turned to stone. So did the red troopers.

On his order, they stopped moving, talking… everything. Like silent statues the stand motionless in the dark. The dark side of the force devoured their fear like a starving beast. It is macabre, and the sound it makes in the force is like bones cracking. A sound that is both dry and wet.

It is nauseating.

"Vader." Anakin' face reflect the disgust and anger Luke sensed from him. Luke had looked at someone like that before. But only one person. The person he had believed at that time had killed his father.

 _'Vader…'_ He thinks and stops the thought. He is not certain what he should do with that observation, but if nothing else he could appreciate the irony.

"Chosen one." He responds, but he does not recognize his own voice. He never used to sound like this. Like Yoda had sounded when Luke left Dagobah. _'Father.'_ He thought and closed his shields around it so it wouldn't show in the force. "We meet again."

* * *

:::

To be continued


	14. If you continue to fight

_**Chapter 14 – If you continue to fight, what will you become? - Saw Gerrera**_

:::

 _What…_

 _What just…_

 _The Sith moved so fast. He had not even seen the blow, so quickly was it over and then he was on the floor, the cold from the hard steel floor clawed at his back._

 _His right hand burned like he had shoved into a burning inferno. He could barely stomach the sickening smell alone. He struggled against the feeling of nausea that rose in the back of his throat and his hands just wouldn't stop shaking._

 _His left hand reached for the right one, instinctively trying to protect it and curl protectively around it. He stilled, a breath locked halfway up his throat and his heart stopped. His searching fingers had found nothing where his hand should be. There was nothing at the end of his wrist._

 _He held his shaking arm up above him._

 _Where his hand should have been, there was nothing. Luke recoiled from the thought in horror. His breath quickened and he could feel his heart hammering in his throat._

 _He couldn't move._

 _Why couldn't he move?_

 _Above him, the red lightsaber drowned the darkness in a hellish red was held in the hand of a man with a signature even darker than the pit below. It hung there over him like an executioner's axe and above it stood the dark figure silent and unmoving as Luke's sight slid in and out of focus._

 _Vader_

:::::

"I have a cell with your name one it." Anakin leaned in so close that the force field just about brushed his face with its burning sting.

"Oh, I am sorry. What did you say again?" Luke said. The first words were more a startled sound than a word until Luke got his voice under control. He could not help it, his heart had skipped at beat when he looked right into the hate in Anakin's eyes "I couldn't hear you over the sound of force field." He mocked tapping at the force field.

It distracted Anakin long enough for Luke to make his fear bleed back behind his mental shields.

He would never be a prisoner again.

Never.

"It will only be a matter of time." Anakin walked the edge of the field like a caged beast. It was nothing more than a few steps back and forth, but the irritated huff that came from Anakin when he gave up and stopped was a very comforting sound. "No one has ever gotten away from me."

"Right." Luke said and couldn't help his lips crook into an old expression he had almost forgotten. "Because I didn't just do that… is it three times now?" He smiled like he meant it but the look in his eyes was as crooked as his smile. "I am afraid I lost count."

"Cute." Rex says.

Luke had almost forgotten about the clone, but he was very grateful for the interruption. It drew him forcefully out of the conversation with his farther immediately.

 _'Why do I always get tunnel-vision when_ _ **he**_ _is around?_ ' he berated himself.

"Thank you for the compliment, Rex." Luke side-stepped the laser, that was still hovering in the air. "But you are not my type." He clenches his hand into a fist with a fast and violent move, like he is crushing something. Immediately the blaster-shot twists around and disappears into the dark. The crack of the shot when it hits something in the hall rises and dies in the span of a second.

Power returns to him, now that it is no longer bound to the blaster-shot. But it is like giving a glass of water to a starving man. Luke has already exerted himself too far. Exhaustion makes his finger shake until he draws on the power of the force surrounding him and the energy soaks mercifully into his strained muscles.

"Why did you follow us here, Vader?" Anakin said. He was very close to the force field again, trying to tower over Luke from the other side. He looked angry, but he didn't feel it in the force. He felt more… _curious_? "And how is it you are you working with Fives?"

The scars burn against his skin, as if in warning, but Luke did not need the reminder. He remembered the bargain very clearly.

"…I followed _you_?" He said and let the sentence die and decay into nothing between them. Anakin's eyes narrow a fraction and Luke can feel the careful touch of his force-presence. _'Amateur_.' He thinks. Anakin's attempt at gauging Luke's intentions, was the indelicate touch of one not used to hiding his powers at all but one used to carrying it around like a torch for all to see.

He ignored the envy that sparked under his carefully built control.

"No…" Anakin says, but it sounds like a question. He does not seem to understand, his face is an expressionless mask, but there is a spark of realization in the force. "You followed…" His narrowed glare slip towards Fives for the fraction of a second before it snaps back to Luke. "Why? I thought you were only trying to assassinate the chancellor!"

There was a whisper in the force, a warning, and the instinctive response died on Luke's lips. He drew back folding his frustrations with the man around himself like a shield.

"Indeed" He answered with a rare touch of pride. "The force is my ally." He explains vaguely, trying to avoid the question "There must be a reason it brought me here."

"Your ally?" Anakin repeated like that fragment of the sentence was important and there was a flash of… _something_ in the force. Luke let it lie, he did not need another distraction. He drew his gaze away from his father painfully.

"Sleep." He says and in the force five different signatures becomes dormant. Luke heard the noise clearly when the soldiers fell into an unnatural sleep so deep that not even the impact with the floor woke them back up. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught the sight of Rex's right hand that snapped to his waist, forgetting that he had surrendered those blasters moments before.

"And the clone?" Luke continued and drew back a little under the pressure of Anakin's scrutiny through the force. "I have never met him. I don't even know his name." With a flick of his wrist Fives collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor. "But it _was_ a very interesting story he just told."

"Leave him!"

"Why do you care?" He keeps his eyes on Fives, but he can feel Anakin's burning glare. It follows Luke when he closed the distance between himself and the fallen soldier. Worry and anger warred for dominance in Anakin's force presence, along with something else.

Doubt.

" _You_ didn't believe him…" Luke says carefully, weighing every word. He needed to cultivate this sudden fragility from Anakin and break his trust in Sidious. "...and I need to know if he told the truth. If all your little soldiers can be controlled."

"That is impossible!"

Luke notes with a small measure of hope Anakin's uncertainty. The sudden doubt could only signify that Anakin considers there might be something to Fives words now that Luke has shown an interest… Or so Luke dearly hoped.

"Maybe." He extends his hand again and the unconscious Fives lifts into the air, the feet are dangling limp just low enough to scrape lightly against the floor. "Maybe not." The words are as merciless as the expression he painted on his face. He tugged at something invisible and as if pulled on a string Fives floated within reach, his boots dragged against the floor.

"If you touch him with that hand, be prepared to lose it." Anakin said from the other side of the force field, as intimidating as a caged rancor could be. Even with the blue light of the lightsaber shinning out from behind the force field it did not worry Luke, not when the remote Fives had used was resting neatly on the floor on this side of the field.

"Now, now Anakin." He says without looking back. "You are hurting my feelings"

"I will hurt more than your feelings when I get out of here!" The light blue saber flashed forward and had a taste of the force field in a shower of sparks. "Let him go!"

"Quiet." Luke said trying to latch on to Fives mind, but the clone's thoughts was in such a delirium that it was impossible to make sense of any of it. "This is very difficult."

"Stop it!" Anakin steps closer to the force field, close enough for Luke to see the desperation in his eyes.

It is not so intense though as the full blown terror in Fives mind

Luke tried to sooth the panic and the fear that was running rampant in the clone's head, but even unconscious like this, his mind was unreasonable and nothing but a vortex of desperation, fear and despair. "Show me." He said forming it like a request in the force, the mind of Fives was already too damaged, there was so little left intact and he dared not make it a demand. It might just shatter what was left of the clone's mind.

Fives presence drew away from him and Luke forced himself to slow down, and be very, very careful. 'I am a friend.' He told Fives. _'The chancellor is my enemy too.'_

"STOP IT!" Anakin raises his hand no doubt trying to reach Luke with the force but the field must muzzle Anakin's force presence because Luke feels absolutely nothing despite Anakin's obvious anger.

There was hesitation in the Force from Fives, but he stopped moving away from Luke's attempt at contact. _'You… believe… me?'_ came a voice lower than a whisper. The desperation of it was a sharp sting to Luke's heart.

 _'I do.'_ He told, but kept his signature as suppressed as he could in order not to further damage Fives mind. He extended his power elsewhere trying to repair the edges of fives tattered mind and attempting to strengthen Fives. The poison in his blood was strong, but Luke's extended will was stronger and the poison started to give way before him.

 _'…Why?'_ Fives voice whispered from the great divide between them.

 _'I know Palpatine and what he is capable of.'_ he said and hesitated, looking for the words he would be allowed to say. I know his plans'. There was a gnawing pain in the scars. A warning. But Luke pressed on continuing to battle the poison. _'I can stop him. With your help.'_

There is a flash of elation that manage to break the panic and the fear for a golden moment. Then Fives signature in the force dimmed drastically, and the last contact is severed. In the shock of it, Luke lost his concentration and the clone falls like a limbless doll to the floor.

Luke panicked for a long horrible moment, but then he felt Fives presence and he breathed a sigh in relief. The clone was out cold, but not dead. His presence in the force was burning steadily. His body was still in the grip of poison, but not as much as before.

"I SAID LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Anakin yells in the same moment. Luke can see the blue glow of the lightsaber before he turns back to his father. The blade is deadly, but it is held uselessly in Anakin's hand when the force field is between them. Kneeling over the collapsed Fives, Luke has no illusion what it must have looked like when the clone-trooper suddenly crashed to the floor.

Luke sighed and let Fives lie on the floor. Fives was far too gone now to communicate with in an effective manner, too much of him was gone. Luke would have to get rid of the poison first, and there was no chance of doing that here.

 _'This just makes things a thousand times more complicated._ ' He thinks.

He knows he could not purge the poison here. There were simply too many things he had to focus on at once. It was hard enough as it was to keep the soldiers sleeping.

"He has done nothing to you!" Anakin said, trying visibly to centre himself, but worry is screaming from him in the force so intensely that for a moment it looks like the dark side of the force.

"And you have done nothing for him!" The sentence escaped Luke's lips like a starving chained hound, hurting and wanting to hurt someone else.

"What was it then?" Rex's voice is strangely vulnerable under the hard façade. "Is there a way to control us?"

Luke was seconds away from just saying 'yes'. He would have done anything to turn things around in his favour, but at the last moment he remembers Anakin who it is staring him right in the face, or rather what he might know.

Luke knows how to fake a truth, he has plenty of experience but he had never lied to a Jedi before, and he knew how easy it was for himself to spot a lie in the force.

And he had to get that skill from somewhere.

 _'How do I play this?'_ To buy time he looks down on the fallen Fives, with a slight frown carved between his brows. _'Do I tell the truth, that I am not sure if the man is delusional or do I try the lie and say yes?'_ None of the options felt right. Even if he told Anakin the truth his father would not believe it, because Luke was the Sith who tried to kill his friend.

There was no way

Unless…

"Seems like you were right, chosen one." He sighs in mock disappointment. "There is no chip." He says and the lie tasted sweet when it crawled over his lips. "It is not possible for anyone to control the clones against their will. This one is merely delusional." He gestures at Fives for good measure.

He feels the sudden pressure of Anakin's force presence, and it is all he can do not to smile. He was right, Anakin would never believe a truth from him. But a lie?

That was another thing entirely

"Well… thanks." Rex looks doubtful, but Luke's suddenly honest expression seems to convince the man. Luke cannot really blame him for it. Luke has had a lot of experience looking sincere when he was busy lying through his teeth. "All things considered it is good to know-"

"He is lying!" Anakin's eyes never leave Luke.

"Am I?" Luke smiles carefully now that Anakin is on the hook.

Then there is a shift in Anakin and the emotion that replaces the anger is more calculative.

Maybe that last question had been a bad idea.

Anakin opened and closed he free hand in a restless unwilling move that gave away the same feeling of unease broadcasted in the Force.

"What is this to you?" He made a gesture with his right hand and as a consequence drew attention to the lightsaber still locked in his grip. "This war." He explained dryly. "I have never even heard of you before. Grievous didn't seem like he knew you either, and he is about as close to high-command as you can get."

"Maybe I am a secret agent?" The question the sentence formed blurred the lie before it imprinted in the force.

"Are you?"

A warning pain bled into the scars on Luke's lower left arm

… _Careful Jedi._

"You tell me."

The frustrated look should not have been so satisfying, but in a macabre way it was. He had spent so much time trying to outrun the terror Anakin had become that it was hard to remain unaffected. Vindictive, as he knew it was, it was hard to resist. It was simply a reaction to, for once, having the upper hand in an endless string of defeats.

"So when did you lose the hand?"

The smile bled away slowly. He resists the urge to look down at the hand his father mutilated. "An old enemy." He said and the voice does not sound like him, it is too calm. To indifferent. "You would have liked him. He also liked to mutilate his enemies."

"You keep saying that like I do it all the time! Dooku had it coming! He was the one who-." Anakin flexes his hand and stops himself, his eyes slide to the side to look at Rex. Then the steel is back in his voice. "And who are you to say anything? You are Sith!" He says in a justified way, like he has the moral high-ground and therefore did not need to argue.

Luke always despised arrogant people like that. It was the same way people used to call him 'farmboy'. Like he was inferior just because he hadn't had their fancy upbringing. The fact that Anakin thinks he stood in front of a Sith did little to quiet that old hurt.

But then instead of rising to the challenge, Luke hesitates. There was a glimpse of… something in Anakin's eyes. An expression with a sinister edge ghosted across his father's face. He couldn't tell what the exact expression was, but it looked ugly.

 _'Why are you suddenly so eager to talk?'_ Luke thought. Anakin was no longer pacing the force field, in fact he had taken a step back and that made the alarms go off in Luke's head. His already strained force presence rushed out into the room, searching for a trap and there is a stab of panic at what he finds.

 _'…I see.'_

There had been **eight** soldiers in the red armour.

Not five.

 _'Trying so hard to distract me.'_ Luke thinks without letting the thought linger long enough to make an imprint in the force. _'You are good.'_ He reluctantly admitted. Even now when he has his senses focused on the soldiers it is hard to keep locked on their presences, like they had training in deflecting force- users. _'I am better.'_

The crushing sound from the blasters exploding in the hands of their owners' sounded like hellfire when the walls screamed the sound back into the room at impact. It was not as loud though as the sound of their startled yells when the weapons in their hands self-destructed.

The broken fragments collect and rush back to Luke, swirling around him in a storm of razor-sharp knives.

"Did you really think that would work?" Luke said and a dark laugh that was not his own reached out from under his iron control and into the sudden silence in the room.

 _'The dark side'_ came a warning from nowhere. It sounded like Leia and it made the anger in him burn brighter. In their desperation the clone troopers tried to charge and get Luke within reach. Luke stopped them with ease.

It was pathetic, their last effort to rush him. They seemed more like helpless children than grown and trained soldiers when the dark side sunk its teeth into them. They were fools even to try and fight the power he bound them with. Their bravery was morbid in contrast to the force that they had no chance to challenge.

 _'…Luke?'_ A weak voice whispered and faded back into memory where it belonged. The silence it left in his mind highlighted the nasty crack when the last clone trooper hit the ground landing on his back. The life did not go out in the force, but it dimmed.

 _'You have to stop!_ ' A voice that was not here anymore yelled at him in desperation, just like it had done that night, but it didn't change anything then. _'Can't you see what this is doing to you?'_

And it wouldn't change anything now.

He sees the fear in the last conscious clone trooper's eyes when he rips the helmet off him and lifts him into the air. _'Wise soldier'_ He thinks darkly holding him meters over the floor his hand extended up and away from him. An eternity stretches. ' _You should be afraid of me.'_ He thinks and then he snaps the hand down.

The trooper's head hits the floor first and then there is nothing in the force and he pauses despite himself and looks down at his hand. That had felt… surprisingly good.

It gave such a lovely cold touch.

"No more witty comebacks?" He said finally and looked up from his hand over his shoulder to Anakin. Then his smile froze and his eyes slid away as he tried to avoid the horrified eyes of his father. "Where did all that spirit go?" He says with a hollow tone; he suddenly felt sick… and very cold.

He suppressed a nervous laugh that felt nasty and pathetic in his throat, and turned back to Fives. He kneeled down beside him and reaches forth to the limp form tortured by the poison running in his veins and his mind delirious with pain, but still somehow conscious. The mind is an open book to him, the mental barriers cannot stop his descent into the haunted and weakened mind.

"Tell me what you know." He says, drawing heavily on the dark side. "Tell me!" He reached into the mind but the care from before was gone. If he had to rip Fives mind apart to get what he needed, he would. There was so much at stake. The very fate of a galaxy.

There was a cold feeling in his hands, the fingers felt numb and there was a sound like twisting winds inside his head. There was nothing in Fives mind at first, then mercifully, he felt Fives mind start to collect itself, bring itself back from the very brink. Sensing his chance Luke flooded his power into Fives. It was power he could not spare, but Fives needed to live along with the secrets in his head.

Then a warning screamed through the force and he drew his mind back and snapped his eyes open just in time to see the red flash. It was too late to stop it. He knew even as he commanded the force to form a shield around him.

Slamming through the half-formed shield, the blaster shot flashed forward and passed without hitting him. Going up to disappear somewhere in the ceiling.

A miss.

He was on his feet in an instant, and the trooper's arm holding the blaster snapped with a loud crack.

"That was stupid." He said with the fear of the almost death sending all his senses into overdrive. The man was screaming, but Luke did not really notice it until the gun he had missed the first time crumbled into an unrecognizable mess when the weapon imploded under the power of the dark side. " _ **Very**_ stupid."

Luke had closed the distance, and froze when he looked down on his almost killer. There was no fear in his eyes. He was smiling.

 _What?_

There was a rush through the force. He snapped around just in time to see the force field flicker out and Anakin's lightsaber lift into attack position, and Luke felt a very familiar stab of terror.

 _Oh no_

:::::::

Vader was a monster.

Even after all he just did, he still had power enough to match General Skywalker in battle.

With the sound of lightsaber's slamming together behind him, Rex ran to his guns and reclaimed them in an instant that took too long for his liking. He hears the sound of lightsaber's clashing again and again behind him and it urges him to move even faster.

The sharp sound echoes against the walls somehow just as loud as the real strikes as the weapons clash in an insanely fast pattern and makes the red and blue light flash through the dark. It seemed the battle was unfolding everywhere.

With the blaster leading the way, Rex turns and faces the fighting. The Jedi and the Sith move fast. He has seen this before, how force-users fight, but this… is on another level. Even with his lifelong experience and practice, it is hard to get a clear shot and he is too old a veteran to chance a shot when he is not certain.

The light dance on the walls and the high racks and the light makes the shadows seem even deeper. The flickering light of red and blue rises and dies like sparks from a fire. Then they separate and their weapons stop for an endless moment. The lights of the red and the blue bathe the room as the two foes measure each other.

He catches a smile from General Skywalker, but Vader expression is grim, focused and Vader's hands are shaking. His lightsaber is reaching out in front of him, held more like a spear than a sword while Skywalker's blue is held overhead, like frozen half-way through a strike.

It is Vader that moves first.

Then very air collect around him and throws him forward, Fives felt the rush of air push past him when the Sith attacks. Vader's blade moves faster than his eye can catch, but somehow, Skywalker intercepts it until a strong blow blasts forward and General Skywalker is flung back.

Skywalker retreats and regroups. He sidesteps a strike meant for his eyes and attacks with a sharp strike that should have removed Vader's heart. Instead Vader's blade dance around the fatal strike and rips upward in a strong move that almost take the blue lightsaber from the general's hand.

Vader is on the offensive. Rex watches in horror as Skywalker is pushed violently back. A hailstorm of blows strikes down upon him and he is forced to give ground. The attacks are insanely fast but Vader shows no sign of slowing down, when the red blade dives again and again at an insane speed. The blue lightsaber is more a shield than a blade and it barely catches the eager red sword in time.

Then in a move almost too fast to follow, Skywalker strikes back flinging the blade forward in a move that intercepts the darker lightsaber rushing after him.

They lock together, even from this distance Rex can see Skywalker's arms shake under the pressure from Vader's powerful blow. The gasp and the tense shoulder coming up to strain against Vader's strength tells Rex all he needs to know.

He aims, and the trigger gives away willingly.

Vader never saw the shot.

The red blast slips past Vader's guard and even then he knows his shot is a lucky one. Vader dodges a strike from Skywalker and backs directly into the shot. Rex hears the startled scream and he notes with elation that Vader's face twist in pain.

Skywalker moves fast. The red lightsaber is suddenly in the air and the light snaps out. He can hear it land somewhere in the dark. Then the blue lightsaber goes out too and plunges the room into complete darkness. The battle does not stop. By the sound of it, it only intensifies.

There is crash somewhere, the sound of something huge hitting the ground hard. He steps forward, the gun leading the way in his hands and the trigger already drawn slightly back. A blue light flicker on again, and Rex snaps the gun in that same direction. Then he registers what he sees and releases the trigger.

"Tough bastard!" Skywalker swears from the floor. The lightsaber rest heavily in his hand, pressed down and only inches away from the back of Vader's neck. "Stay down!" He yells at Vader who just won't stop resisting. A blast of force lightning roars from Vader's free hand and rips the darkness apart long enough for Rex to catch a glimpse of his brothers that are lying lifeless on the ground.

He closes the distance between them in an instant.

"We will bring him back to the chancellor" Skywalker hisses trying to keep the resisting Vader down with great difficulty. Vader is twisting and turning like a man possessed, it looks like darkness itself is gathering around the Sith and the air is so cold is stings the skin of his face. "Rex, give me the binders!"

Rex instantly moves to do just that. He unclicks the binders from his belt. It was binders that had originally been meant for Fives and he doubted it would keep the Sith in control for long, but this is the best they have right now.

He kneels down beside his general and Vader's moves become more and more frantic. The air stink of burnt flesh and Rex sees instantly the burn marks on the back of Vader's neck. It is like Vader does not notice the pain and the damage he is doing to himself. There is a wild look in Vader's yellow eyes.

Rex puts the gun down and reaches for Vader's hands. The binder clips easily around one of Vader's wrist, but then another more foreboding clicking sound ring out very close to his temple.

"I am sorry." A voice says, a familiar voice, sounding more broken than he ever heard it. "But I have to stop this… stop him."

Then the world goes dark.

He blinks his eyes open. Everything blurs in and out of focus. Vader is still underneath General Skywalker but he has twisted out of his grip and around to face him. There is a sharp purple light reflected on the walls, and Vader's hand is digging into General Skywalker's short hair.

The general is screaming

Rex struggles to rise, but he cannot move his arms, legs … anything. His eyes blink in and out of focus again. His world goes dark and when he can finally open them again, the general lies lifeless on the ground and a pair of yellow eyes are looking down on Rex. There are hands searching him and the chain of the binder is still dangling from one of Vader's wrists.

 _'…the key.'_ He thinks with a faint smugness that bleeds through the strange numbness that had overtaken him. The Sith won't find the key, Skywalker had it, but Vader does not seem to think of it. Rex laughs in the Sith's face and sees the surprise in his eyes. Then a heavy hand press down on his forehead.

Then the lights go out.

And Rex knows nothing more.

::::

To be continued

A special thanks to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta :)


	15. Be brave

_**Chapter 15 – Be brave and don't look back. Don't look back. – Shmi Skywalker**_

* * *

:::

* * *

 _Luke held onto the small holocom in his hands a little while longer._

 _It was a comfortable weight in his hands even if it was a little battered thing and the surface was rough under his fingers. It was visibly worn around the edges to the point that it should have cracked and damaged the message recorded on it._

 _It was only sheer luck it hadn't._

 _He could not help but wonder what this little thing had suffered through before it ended up in Grakkus the Hutt's morbid collection. He ran his fingers carefully down the edges that he feared would crack if he held onto it too tightly. But when he looked at the image that rose up at his gentle touch it gave him the strength he needed._

 _He sighed and stared into the darkness in front of him, then back over his shoulder to the world that was now almost as dark. There was no moon this night but the stars blinked bravely up there alone. He breathed in deeply once more._

 _This was it._

* * *

:::

Anakin stood back up from his kneeling position. The cloth was carefully placed into a plastic bag for analysis. Aside for the carnage, this small cut piece of cloth was the only proof that Vader had been here at all. He had Rex to thank for that proof, the soldier's shot had given Anakin the edge in the battle with the Sith.

A fight he lost.

 _'All right, now that's done.'_ Anakin thinks as he closes the bag. He didn't usually collect the evidence himself, but Vader was a special case, and most of the troopers were still recovering from the ambush. There were no causalities, _'thank the force!'_ But Fox's arm was clearly broken and while the trooper didn't say anything it was still very obvious that it was extremely painful.

But the biggest clue in all of this had not been the piece of cloth he just collected, but a sentence the Sith had spoken. "The force is my ally." Anakin repeated, still mystified by it. "Have you ever heard a Sith say that?" He asked Rex.

"I don't understand what you mean, Sir." Rex replied in his usual matter-of-fact way. In the time Anakin had known him, he had always been like that.

"It is a teaching of the Jedi and perhaps the most important." He said while still trying to understand why _a Sith_ would say that. There had been no mockery in the words when he spoke them, but it was against their teachings to regard the force that way. "The Sith are opposite." He explained to Rex as simple as he could. "To the Sith the force is a tool. Nothing more."

"Maybe he was just trying to fool you." Rex said. "Sith are not usually known for telling the truth."

"He wasn't lying." Anakin said. "I felt it. He meant every word."

"…What does that mean, sir?"

 _'Force, if I know!'_ He thought before he said "Maybe nothing…"He dared not speak it, but maybe this Sith he had been chasing around… was no Sith at all? Was it possible to use the dark side of the force without being Sith? Then his eyes widened in shock. "He healed Fives." He muttered out loud before he could catch himself.

"Sir?"

"He used both sides of the force." Anakin said in wonder, replaying the memory in his mind. "Healing is a light side ability. _'About as light as is gets.'_ The thought nagged at him. Every lesson he had ever had concerning the dark side had made it very clear that the dark side was almost impossible to resist and when people turned… there was no going back. It was a pit that waited on the edge of every Jedi's life, always ready to devour them whole.

"Isn't that impossible? To use both" Rex said trying to be analytical about it, because he really did not understand the meaning of this discovery.

 _'Yes'_ Anakin thought immediately, it was impossible. Using both the light and the dark side of the force could not happen. But he had seen it. _'It should be.'_ He thought upon reflection, with the doubt creeping in, but said instead. "Apparently not." He hesitated. "I will have to speak to Obi-Wan about it."

He put his hand up to his face and tried to still the raging thoughts in his head. Too much of this wasn't making any sense.

Suddenly Rex's Holocom made a short sound, the sound of an incoming message. Rex quickly stepped away and accepted the call. When he answered, his voice was not raised above normal speech-level but the words were loud as blaster-shots in the otherwise silent room.

There was a great silence in the hall from all others, but it was a quiet that did not exist in the force, where feelings of humiliation and frustration rang louder than thunder. Anakin did not doubt that those very same emotions also came from him. He grimaced at the thought. He had been so close he could taste it.

 _'I had him!'_ He thinks and the admission tastes terrible in his mouth. He had had Vader in his grasp and the Sith somehow still managed to gain the upper hand. When Rex snapped the cold binder around Vader's wrist he thought he had won. _'Fool!'_ He berates himself and grimaced at his own stupidity. _'I should have known it would not be that easy!'_

But in his defence, how could he had known that Fives would turn on them like that? Anakin still couldn't wrap his head around it. Fives never seemed like a traitor, but his actions were speaking against him. First the mess he had made on Kamino, then the attack on the Chancellor and now… siding with a Sith.

If anyone had told him this about Fives yesterday he would have called them a liar. Now…

He shook his head to himself and regretted it immediately when pain stabbed him in the back. The sting of the force lightning was still an uncomfortable reminder down his back where the worst of the damage was. While Vader's reluctance to kill had shown itself once again, and Anakin no longer believed it a coincidence, Vader was certainly not pulling his punches. Vader had hit like an ion cannon.

 _'Next time it will be different.'_ Anakin promised himself. Anakin knew the technique Vader used to be so much more powerful than he had been in their previous fight. It was a risky method, but it had done its job. Vader was gone. He drew in a tight breath and forced the frustration out of his system with a heavy exhale.

Acting out of emotion would not help him catch this Sith.

"Sir!" came a voice suddenly over the crowd and Anakin had to block off the feelings broadcasted at him through the force. Rex had ended the call and walked up beside him, his expression was strictly controlled.

"Yes, Rex?"

"They just sent word from the Temple. They are giving us reinforcements."

Anakin nodded, swallowing his pride. He knew Windu would be among them.

"We are not going to wait for them." He said and Rex looked like he had expected that answer. There was not even the ghost of surprise to be read from him through the force.

"The trail is already getting cold." Rex agreed. "Can you get a read on him?"

"Give me a moment." Anakin said, and closed his eyes. His connection to the force deepened as he breathed in slowly and exhaled. The force shone back at him when he opened his connection completely. He could sense the troopers on a deeper level and that they, despite their confrontation with the Sith, were largely unharmed.

This was a peaceful place in the force, he could tell that it was a place not usually disturbed. Vader's damage to it had luckily been minimal, but his marks were still very distinct and his presence was still a shadowy touch in the hall.

"I can track his presence." Anakin said. "But only to a broader area, I won't be able to pinpoint his exact location."

The massive force power Vader had used within the hall lay thick in the air. Even a non-force sensitive would feel the cold of it. Ironically if Vader had not been so powerful his trace would be long gone by now.

"You won't need to sir." Rex said and pulled something from his belt. It was a small tracker. "He might still wear the binder I got on his wrist. If we can get close enough, I can use this to track him."

"How precise is it?"

"Very."

Anakin did not even try to supress his smile.

"Then that is our plan." He said and locked in on Vader's force presence. He could still feel the power that Vader had wielded in their battle. Anakin now recognized the technique Vader had used to reach this insane power. It was a double-edged sword.

With the technique the force-user would draw energy directly from the force and make it possibly to push past their normal boundaries, but it had consequence. Vader would burn like a supernova for a while, but eventually his body would not be able to sustain the immense strain of the technique. A collapse was imminent.

And Vader was already tired.

"You stay with Commander Fox." Anakin ordered one trooper before he turned to face the others. He did not need the force to recognize the determination in their eyes. "The rest of you are with me." He said with certainty he had learned through experience. The chase was on.

Vader would not escape

Not this time.

* * *

::::

Fives only realized he had blacked out when he opened his eyes again. The frost was heavy in the air and his warm breath turned into small white clouds. He tried to collect his thoughts. He did not remember this place that had a nasty smell of burned flesh. The damp of the ground has long since bled up into his armour, a clammy coldness he is familiar with.

But he did not understand. Was he not on Kamino?

"..What?" he said and regretted it the moment he spoke. The word was unbearably loud. Fives touched his head, the whole world was spinning.

"You fainted." A voice from above supplied helpfully but he did not understand. He was… on the floor? His mind struggled with it... Then everything snapped into focus when he saw what was leaning over him. A pair of yellow eyes stared unblinkingly down at him.

All the little dots in Fives mind do not connect. He had helped Vader! Why in all that was sacred had he done that! He tries to recall the reason, but the poison made everything so hard to focus on, and even those resent memories were only blurred shadowy images.

Then he remembers. It all came rushing back, Tup's death, the obedience chips and Chancellor Palpatine.

The man, Vader, pulls back his hands and they leave a lingering warmth on each side of Fives' face where they had been resting just moments before. Fives tries not to dwell too long on that uncomfortable observation.

The air is thick between them and the tension heightens in the complete silence. Unease creeps in on Fives and Vader's heavy stare is not even broken by blinking. Fives tries to ignore it, but it is hard when Vader is kneeling right in the middle of one of the few lights coming down form the streets above.

It is not a lot of light on second thought, barely even brighter than the darkness around them both, but it is the only light in the alley. In contrast to the almost pitch black shadows at the roots of the walls it appears a lot brighter than it should.

Fives pushes back to gain some distance from the kneeling Sith. Vader follows the retreat with his eyes but does not move otherwise. Fives throws a look around and does not recognize anything. It looks like any dark alley in the bad end of the slums. It is impossible to judge a more detailed location.

"Why did you bring me here?" He asked and the words rose and died alone, unanswered.

Vader stared back at him from under his hood. It was drenched and looked uncomfortable and heavy. The shadow the hood cast did not improve the dark circles around Vader's eyes, the man looked beyond exhausted. It was very little comfort, because Fives knew from experience that desperation and exhaustion was an unstable mix at best.

Fives knew what men looked like when they were reaching their limit and the thought sparked an idea in his head.

Fives eyed the end of the street. It was far, but maybe he could-

"Please don't run." The Sith says, and the trooper realizes how young he looked with shadows carved heavily under his eyes. The grim look in narrowed eyes reminded Fives that youth did not necessarily mean innocent. He had met many young enemies and allies and they could be just as dangerous as men and women twice their age

"It took a lot out for me to drain your system of the venom." The Sith explains and cocks his head slightly. His eyes stared unblinkingly at Fives. It was unnerving. "I am exhausted, and in a very bad mood. Don't make me chase after you." The promise in those words formed into a threat in Vader's unnaturally yellow eyes.

Fives had fought Sith before, but none of them had yellow eyes like this one.

They looked like poison and decay.

"Who says I am gonna run? maybe I am gonna fight you instea-"

The world blur out of focus, the memories of the recent horrible days flash before his eyes, like he was watching an old holovid but with his own memories playing on the screen. He shook his head and felt like he pushed back at an invisible force. When he regained his senses, the Sith was drawing his hand back.

"Obedience chips." The man whispers in wonder. The Sith looks down at his hand like it is its fault. For a moment it looked like there was a tremor in the Sith's hand. Then Vader-s eyes snapped back to Fives and he reaches forward again. This time though his reaching hand did not connect to Fives forehead because of the backhand colliding with it halfway there.

"Hey, Hands off!" Fives shout and pulls himself further back, as far as he can until his back hit a dead end when it is pressed flat against the wall.

"I need to know." The Sith insisted with narrowed eyes, he flung his hand out and struck faster than a snake. Fives felt most awful sensation, it feels like nails, nails scraping for purchase inside his head and suddenly a memory was ripped right to the front of Fives mind. It was the memory that had not stopped for one moment to haunt him ever since he stood in front of Palpatine.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Fives hand strikes back out but a strong force wraps around it before It can connect. It is just Vader's hand wrapped around his wrist but the hand feels more like it was made of stone, the grip is unnaturally strong. 'The force' he thinks with dread and he freezes on the spot, he suddenly remembers the sound of Fox's arm snapping like a twig.

He swallows, trying to master the sudden stab of fear and stared back at the darkness that has collected impossibly deep around the Sith. It gathered around Vader like a cloak that draped thickly around him and it flows down his shoulders like black smoke.

"I can force you." The sith makes very clear with an intense look in his eyes as darkness snaked up between his fingers like it was a living being." Do not make me."

Vader reaches forward again, this time Fives is sure he can see the shake and he can hear the chain dangling from his wrist clink softy as it swings softly back and forth. "I need to know where they are." Vader said like it was an apology and he was so intendent on completing this objective that Vader did not realize his mistake until it was too late.

The click of a safety snapping off breaks the silence like a roar of thunder,

"I don't think you want to do that." Fives said behind the blaster he just took from Vader's belt. Vader's eyes widen and his hand freezes instantly between them. Fives grins. Vader was a fool to simply place the blaster where Fives could reach it.

The Sith's hands lift slowly, palms open before him and the darkness breaks away like it was never there in the first place. It leaves the alley almost as dark but a lot warmer than before. Now the air does not sting the inside of his throat like a thousand needles every time he breathes.

"Now it is my turn to ask the questions." Fives pushes himself up, surprised at how revitalized he feels. All the hurts that had been bothering him after the mission and the intense episode that happened after were all completely gone. He felt ten years younger.

The Sith was a good healer…and wasn't that in itself weird?

"Why would you want the obedience chip?" He asked and eyes the Sith still kneeling on the ground "They are probably destroyed by now anyway."

"Why do you think they have been destroyed?" The Sith asked instead and pushed himself up on his feet. Fives knows he does not imagine the small stumble when Vader stood up even if the Sith tried to cover it. He suppresses a satisfied sound when he realizes that Vader does not reach his eyelevel. A short Sith is a lot less intimidating.

"Don't move." He says and takes the lightsaber from the Sith's belt and clips it to his own. There is no other weapon on him. Through the quick search, the Sith stares unblinkingly and does not move. Not Yet.

Fives takes a small step back.

"Why?" The Sith repeated condescendingly.

Fives considered the question. He did not know what kind of thing the chips were, and exactly what they could make the troopers do against their will. Maybe the chips controls could be commandeered by the enemy they could make the clone troopers do whatever they wanted.

 _'His brothers…'_ Fives thinks and his mind stumbles over the horror of that possibility.

"It is what I would have done." He answers quickly to ward away the images and pushes the blaster forward so heavily that the pressure against the Sith's chest pushes him back against the opposite wall.

A strange look crosses in the Sith's yellow eyes, and it pulls at something in Fives memory. There was something familiar about that expression, like he had seen it before but he cannot place it. Then it clicks "Stay out of my head!" Fives orders and a subtle pressure he had barely noticed pulled away. "Why are you even interested in the chips anyway?"

The Sith looked at him with an unreadable expression. The silence stretched for so long that Fives knew whatever came out of that mouth next would be a lie or a half-truth. The Sith leans back against the wall in what Fives has no doubt was supposed to look casual and unworried, but he was leaning to heavily and his breath is too quick.

"Believe me when I say that it is in both of our interest that you help me." The Sith finally responds carefully and bites his lip. "I am trying to prevent something horrible, and in order to do that chancellor Palpatine needs to go." The Sith says his voice is calmer but he seems nervous now and he keeps looking down on his left arm.

"The chips just proves that Palatine cannot be allowed to continue." Vader say and Fives did not manage to say anything to that before the Sith continued "Palpatine needs to die, it was the very same thing you tried-"

"No, I am not trying to kill him. I am trying to expose his plans!" Fives said and his words are heavy with denial "The Jedi do not believe in killing their enemies."

The Sith just stares like Fives just sprouted a horn between his eyes. "I'm not a Jedi…" He says slowly, like he is fearing Fives would not understand. "…and neither are you."

"I can't just kill somebody like that." Fives snaps back ignoring the words. "There's is no _proof_ of how much the chancellor is in on, it could be that he is merely-."

"So you are going to let him force your fellow soldier into killing their friends?" He pauses then narrow his eyes and goes for the throat. "You would do that to your own brothers?"

"I won't come to that!" Fives tries to ease his frustration, but he was failing to hide it and he knew it. The Sith was very skilfully getting under his skin, but Fives couldn't help it, all the bottled up fear and desperation finally had a target. "I told you. I am going to do this the right way. I am going to find proof and then I'll-"

"Show it to Skywalker? Because that worked out so splendidly last time-"

"Shut up!" the gun is at Vader's throat now, digging into the skin so hard it had to be painful, but the Sith did not react to it at all. There was no trace of pain in his face.

"Just tell me where the chips are hidden, and you don't need to do anything else." Vader said very calmly for someone with a gun aimed at his neck. "I will take care of it for you."

"You?" Fives does not try to mask his sarcasm.

"I know Palpatine far better than you do." Vader said and actually leaned forward against the deadly gun uncaring that it digs mercilessly into his neck. "When Palpatine only kills his enemies, it is as close to mercy as he can get."

Fives did not like how honest that sounded. He relieves the pressure but keeping his finger on the trigger as he considers the Sith in front of him. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't know what that bastard is capable of. He will kill the entire- ." Vader stutters, his mouth gasp in a silent scream and he pulls back again with pain suddenly carved into his eyes. His breath catches and his hand sudden grip his left arm. His shoulders tense up and Fives is close enough to see Vader's entire body tremble.

Just how far had Vader pushed himself?

"What… do you think he…" A painful gasp cuts the sentence off before Vader manage to finish "H-he would do… with that power?"

"If the chips are not already destroyed" Fives says and back another step away while Vader was trying to collect himself from whatever fit he was having. "And that is a big _'if_ '." He adds keeping his eyes very carefully on Vader who seemed to get the trembling under control "They will be in Nala Se's possession, but I doubt she is stupid enough to carry them around with her. They are most likely in her private rooms in the senate."

"…in the Senate?" Vader breathes, and it sounds like merely bringing the words past his clenched teeth was painful. The darkness around him flickered, like it was touched by some persistent unseen light. "Why? She is a doctor not a Politician"

"No. She is not. But as one of the chief engineers of the clone army, she has a permanent room she stays in when she is on the planet."

Vader seemed to deflate in front of him and for a split-second there is a look of such hopelessness on his face that it makes something uncomfortable clench in Fives chest. "All right." Vader whispers so lowly that Fives almost didn't catch it.

"Thank you." Vader said and it was like the words was an unsaid command. Suddenly the darkness is back and the entire world around him is cold. So cold his breath become white puffs of white smoke again. "That was just what I needed to know" Vader says and pushes away from the wall. He no longer shakes and his movements are bold and strong.

The darkness moved with him.

"Hey." Fives points the blaster at Vader "I have the blaster remember? You are not going-"

The blaster ripped out of his hands. A rumble like thunder tear though the silence and the blaster hovering in the space between them crushes in on itself. It falls to the pavement as only an unrecognizable lump of metal.

"Figured you would be more willing to talk if you thought you had all the cards in your hand." Vader said with a casual air that does not match the heavy yellow stare that carries little to no emotion at all. "I suggest you find a place to hide until this is over." And with that Vader hold out his hand and the lightsaber in Fives belt jumps willingly into the open palm. Vader puts it back in his own belt before he turns and takes off at a brisk walk down the alley, the end of his cloak brush against Fives shins when he passes.

Stunned, Fives could first only stare after him. At first he is flooded with relief, then the mental image of his brother's suddenly springs to mind and the horrible things the chip might make them do.

He screams at his body to move.

"Wait!"

Vader does not react, does not stop. There is not even a halt in his steps

"I said wait!" His hand close around Vader shoulder and pulls the Sith back around. He feels a rush a wind and a powerful impact. He stumbles back, crossing his arms over his chest but the intense lash that hit him disappeared along with the wind.

"Careful." Vader says and lowers his hand again to his side where it came to rest on the hilt of the lightsaber that Fives can barely glance under the heavy cloak the Sith was wearing. "I am done playing around."

"So am I." Fives says and close the distance between them. He only stops when Vader start lifting the lightsaber out in warning. "Listen to me! If we are going to do this we are doing this my way, there is no way that someone like you can-" he should perhaps have dialled down on the attitude, because it made the Sith snap.

"Someone like me!" The Sith says like Fives had just insulted his mother. Then he leans forward and actually pokes Fives in the chest with sharp motion. "And for the record there is no _'We'_ , you ungrateful son of a Hutt! You would be dead without me!"

"And you won't get into the senate without my help!"

"Your help!" The Sith says like he is choking on the words and he suddenly seemed very much younger without the controlled emotionless mask he had worn ever since Fives first met him. The Sith was not taken aback for long though. "You can't even help yourself! You don't know-"

"I know you won't get far with this thing on." Fives says and snaps a hand out to tug at the chain dangling from Vader's wrist.

"This _**thing**_ might have been made to block the force if it was placed correctly, which it isn't!" Vader swipes his other hand out at Fives and the trooper immediately let's go of the chain. "It blocks _nothing_ of my power." Then Vader adds with a sinister undertone. "Do you perhaps want me to demonstrate this for you?"

Vader is frightening like this, standing with the growing darkness at his back, but if Fives had been a stranger to fear then he would not have come far as a soldier. He knew better than that. Bravery was not the absence of fear but the courage to act in the face of it.

"If it does nothing, then why haven't you taken it off yet?" He says without backing down. _'Bullseye''_ he thinks with triumph when Vader suddenly look less certain and his eyes shift away.

"If you must know, then it does not block the force from me, but it makes my control of it…" he pauses and adds finally. "Imprecise." The word is sharp like a gunshot, like he is ordering Fives not to ask about it but Fives never was great at taking orders from Sith.

"…so in other words, if you try to break that binder off, you will take the hand with it?" He asks and Vader disgruntled twitch in his otherwise blank expression says everything. "What will you do about the tracker then?"

Vader mouth opened and closed in a moment that would have been comedic in any other setting. Whatever words he had wanted to say were forgotten as he lifts his hand to inspect the chain.

"We had them installed in case a prisoner escaped from custody during transport." Fives explained but he seems largely forgotten by Vader. The Sith was already inspecting the chain closely. His fingers ran over it, no doubt trying to locate the tracker. He took half a step back underneath one of the small light that came from somewhere above as he lifted the wrist up close and into the ray of light.

"You won't get into the senate." Fives says with a greater calm, now that Vader is no longer looking at him. "Not without my help." He adds with more force and Vader finally glances at him over his inspection.

"I will figure something out. I always do." Vader replies with a sceptic tone that leaves little room for argument and his eyes slide down again to the chain with his brow furrowed, but the anger in him seems to have gone, and there is less of the foreign pressure in the air.

"If I had not held a gun to Rex's head, you would be sitting prettily in an interrogation room right now." Fives said. "You still might get there, if we do not get rid of that." He says and gestures at the binder.

"…what do you suggest?" Vader says like it was painful as he straightened from his search of the tracker to give Fives a searching look.

"I suggest we work together." Then without asking for permission he reaches forward and tugs the chain closer and the startled Vader along with it. "We will have a better chance of unveiling this conspiracy than we do on our own."

Vader seems completely dumbstruck by Fives rash move and stands very still in the seconds it takes Fives to unlock it. "Universal key" Fives comment and throws the chain into the nearest pile of trash. Vader follows its path through the air with his eyes to where it lands and he rubs the place around his wrist where the binder had been before.

"I don't know what history you have with Palpatine, but there is no need to kill him." Fives says holding up a hand "Wait! Hear me out." He pauses for a moment, but the only ripple on Vader emotionless expression is a slightly raised eyebrow. He crosses his arms across his chest in a very stubborn pose, but he keeps his silence.

"You obviously think Palpatine will do something with those chips. Correct?" Fives asks and receives a blank stare from Vader, not about to be discouraged Fives press on. "Wouldn't disabling them solve your problem?"

Vader drums the fingers on his one hand restlessly on his arm. "Go on..."

" _If_ we get to Nala Se, we can take the chips and have them analysed. That way we can figure out how to destroy then or turn them off." He explained to the Sith. "Palpatine, whatever his role in this is, will be without this hidden weapon leaving him powerless. You won't have to kill-"

"I _**will**_ kill Palpatine." Vader says and for a moment there is an odd pressure in the air and Vader's words resound like they are echoing against the walls of an empty room. It sounded like there was more than one voice speaking. The effect is gone before Fives can be certain he heard it right or if his mind were playing games with him, because it is no trace of it when Vader continue. "That is non-negotiable."

"And how has that worked out for you so far?" Fives says back with just as much determination as the Sith. "The man is the leader of the republic, a republic that has been at war for years now. If it was easy to kill him someone would have done that by now."

The Sith looked like he just swallowed something disgusting and couldn't quite decide if he should throw it up or try to stomach it.

"…I have almost killed him twice." Vader says in a quiet opposition, but it sounds more like a stubborn teenager than a dangerous Sith. Vader realized that too if the lines deepening under his eyes are any indication. He looks vulnerable enough that it makes Fives pause.

" _Almost_ , being the keyword in that sentence." Fives persist ignoring the fragile expression on Vader's face he does not want to see before it disappears behind a blank mask when Vader got himself under control. "Look." He said and bled enough sincerity into his voice to be believable. "I can get us into the senate. Unseen."

Vader looked to the right, as if searching for a response out there in the dark. His brows pulled together in a collected but fatigued expression before he throws a look down the alley behind him. He breathes out in a huff, then looks back to Fives with something that looks like resigned regret in his eyes.

"…Alright." The Sith says with a sharp undertone. The strict calm Vader wears like a second skin is back, and his expression betrayed none of the feelings he might have hidden behind it. "Our interests are aligned."

"Deal?" Fives says cheekily and holds out a hand. A look ghosts over Vader's eyes. He looks at the hand as if it is a poisonous snake about to bite him. Fives hand was already dropping when Vader's hand closed around his in a firm handshake. The hand didn't feel right, it was cold and felt like unyielding stone. _' A robotic hand'_ Fives realized when he closes his hand around Vader's.

Vader must have seen his shock, because he grins in a way that does not reach his eyes before he agrees.

"Deal."

* * *

::::

To be continued

* * *

Author's note:

A quick update this time! Thank you for your reviews ! It is what keeps me writing :)

A big thanks goes to Shinigami Merchant for taking the time to Beta :)


	16. We all have things we won't forget

_**Chapter 16 – 'We all have things we won't forget.' (ISB-Agent Kallus)**_

* * *

 _"You know…" Han's voice suddenly said very close and Luke pushed out from under the lid of the engine of the x-wing. "I've been thinking."_

 _"…That sounds comforting." Luke says with a short smirk and steps away from the engine. Han is leaning up against the x-wing like he owns it. 'You wish' Luke thought with a bigger smile creeping up on his face and he threw a look at the millennium Falcon at the other end of the hall. There was no reasonable explanation why that things still held together, but fly it did, somehow._

 _He had long suspected that the major explanation for that was Chewie._

 _"You don't look much like a Jedi." Han said suddenly, he gave Luke a searching look, and sighed like he was disappointed._

 _'What?' Luke thought but didn't get enough time to put words to the thought before Han continued louder than before._

 _"And aren't they all supposed to be old wrinkled guys?"_

 _"Han are you serious-" Luke could feel his left eye starting to twitch as visible sign of his astonishment._

 _"And wearing those smelly robes, like the old man-"_

 _"Did you really just come all the way down here to insult me?" Luke says with a crooked smile of his own with a little more edge to it. Leia temper must be rubbing off on him. He wipes his hands on an oil-stained cloth. It is so cold that Luke really wants to wrap it around his hands rather than put it down on the box. "Or are you just hiding from Chewie?"_

 _Luke knew Han was a good pilot, great even, but the Millennium Falcon always seemed to return a little worse off than it had been on departure. It had given Luke a great respect for Chewie's skill as an engineer. Nothing less than a master at the craft would keep that old scrapheap in the air._

 _"Ouch, kid." Han fakes looking hurt so badly that it takes all of Luke's limited Jedi training not to bark out a laugh. Han's grin gets even more crooked and he lifts his hands in mock surrender "I was only asking."_

 _Luke taps his fingers on the box a few times, unsure how to answer. Han always seems to know what to say and Luke would rather spare himself any debates with the smuggler. He was tired of always losing them._

 _"It didn't smell that bad-"_

 _Han raised an eyebrow_

 _"…Yeah okay, it was a little… worn." Luke relented. He had liked Ben, but the robe was old and it showed. "Han, is there a point to this? because right now I cannot see it." He crosses his arms over his chest and appeared impatient, but secretly grateful for the distraction._

 _He was bored out of his mind! He had not thought there existed a planet in the galaxy that was more boring than Tatooine. Then they had found Hoth, and Luke had found himself corrected._

 _The constant danger of frostbite aside it was a planet filled with snow and little else. Nothing to do and nothing to see. One of these days he might even try to borrow one of the tautauns, no matter how much they smelled, just to get out of the base for a while. He was starting to go stir crazy._

 _"Just stumbled on this." Han said and pulled out something he had hidden on his back. "I know you can't really use it here, but we won't stick around forever in this ice cube." He threw it to Luke that just managed to uncross his arms in time to catch it. It was a large piece of black cloth. He looked back at Han that just grinned like he just stumbled upon an inexperienced first time criminal with a huge coin purse._

' _Then Luke unfolded the thing and realized what it was. "This is a-"_

 _"Couldn't find it in brown, but black looks cooler anyway." Han said with a nervous gesture while watching Luke's reaction out of the corner of his eyes. "The ladies like it too."_

 _Han had given him a Jedi robe._

 _"Where did you even find this?!"_

 _"Hey, smuggler here." He opened his hands in front of him with his palms out in a wide casual gesture. "It's a secret of the trade. I can't just tell people how I do my job."_

 _"But why-" Luke held the robe close to himself, the warmth from it folded tightly against his chest that seemed to chase the cold completely away. He looked down, he brushed the dark cloth with his thumb and swallowed thickly._

 _A Jedi robe._

 _ **His**_ _Jedi robe._

 _The impact of it, and the thoughtfulness behind it left him grasping for words when he looked back at Han, but Han seemed to understand anyway, because his smile was suddenly very soft._

 _"Well you won't listen to sense will you? And if you want to be a one of those religious types so bad you might as well look the part."_

 _"… it's called a Jedi, Han." Luke said, mildly insulted, but there was no sting to his words when he pulled the cloak up for closer inspection._

 _There was a sudden lightness to his heart that he could not explain and he could not suppress his wide smile if he tried._

 _"Sure." Han said and grinned. "Happy birthday, kid."_

* * *

::::

"I am not worried Anakin. I have complete faith in you and your abilities." Palpatine said and watched the Jedi make a small nod and ended the call. The blue light of the holocom faded and left the room darker in the faded light he preferred in his office when it was this late.

He leaned back in the chair and the soft padding convinced his strained muscles to finally relax. It had been too long since he had been in combat, but he still shouldn't feel this exhausted after such a short battle.

But in his defence this had been an… eventful day.

The plan had been a great risk, he knew that when he arranged his own kidnapping, but the reward had been too great to pass up. If successful, he would have finally started the end game. Instead he had not accomplished anything at all, because a new player had entered the game.

Someone who knew and controlled the dark side of the force.

Palpatine turned the chair around and looked out over the city he had known for a long time would be his, for the last year it had seemed like a scripted inevitability and one he had looked forward to. Now it seemed his ambition had run away with him and another obstacle to his ultimate goal had blindsided him.

If the chosen one had not acted in his defence, then this game he had been planning for over half his life would have ended pitifully. Pitifully and unknown. He was still unsure which one of those were the most distasteful to him.

He placed the glass back on the table and the reddish liquid shifted softly back and forth in the glass before it finally stilled. Palpatine looked out over the city's many lights as his mind ran through the possible motives of this new enemy. The answer eluded him because the few clues he had led in opposite directions.

Vader knew who Palpatine was under his guise. It was a luxury Palpatine did not share as he knew nothing of Vader before the moment when he sliced off Dooku's head.

The enemy, this Vader, was a Sith but that in itself was impossible. There could not still be any Sith left in the galaxy. Palpatine had personally seen to that he was the only one and before his master had been notorious for nurturing the rule of two. It was one of the few things that still made Palpatine think fondly of his old master.

It meant that Palpatine had a lot less enemies to deal with now.

But then apparently, there was someone that his master had missed because, out of nowhere, comes this new Sith called Vader and the infuriation question of _'who'_ he was still remained unanswered.

He tapped a finger thoughtfully on the surface of the table, lost in thought. Vader had been too close too many times, but it was obvious that the man was not a Sith lord. Judging from his use of the force and his lack of technique he was an Sith _**apprentice**_ at best.

The humiliation of almost being killed by someone so unworthy made his jaw tighten in anger. But it also presented another problem. Because if Vader was the apprentice, that would mean that Vader had a master lurking out there in the galaxy.

A Sith lord was a powerful enemy, and this one already knew who Palpatine was.

It was the real problem now that Vader had revealed himself. Sidious had complete faith that Anakin would take care of Vader for him. A smile crept up on his lips at the irony of that setup.

This unknown Sith lord should know better to send his poorly trained apprentice when Sidious' own apprentice was far more capable and far more powerful.

Calmed by this thought Sidious indulges and allows himself another sip of the drink that burns comfortably all the way down his throat.

Then he almost chocked on it when the holocom on his table signalled an incoming call.

Sidious coughed, the burn of the drink stung and wetted his eyes. He drew in a hissing breath and spat out the rest on the floor. He cleared his throat, forced the unnatural open and welcoming expression on his face, until he sees who was calling.

He sets the holocom to voice-display only and answers the call.

"Grievous."

* * *

:::

Anakin watches with hard-fought patience as Rex picks up the binders from a trash can. He could not even bring himself to be disappointed. It was like a part of him has expected this outcome. He could feel that Vader had been here recently because his presence still hung in the air, but it was nothing more than the weakest of imprints.

He doubted he could follow it.

There was also a spike in the force that signalled that some demonstration of power had happened, but it had occurred without marking the force with the cold touch of death. _'Maybe Vader is becoming unstable?'_ Anakin thought. The Sith was using a dangerous technique.

He sighed despite himself but it did not relieve the tension in his shoulders. The Chancellor had taken the news of his failure very graciously, and it made the guilt of failing in catching Vader feel even heavier. It was also the reminder he needed. Vader had shown a determination not to kill anyone in all of the battles Anakin had faced him, but with one notable exception.

Palpatine.

"So they are working together then." Anakin says when he sees that the binders are undamaged. He was surprised inwardly how much sting there still was to that realization. He would never have thought that Fives of all people would turn on his brothers, on the republic.

"Or Vader took them from him." Rex answered like Anakin knew he would and there was more hurt than anger in that tone.

"You believe that?" he found himself asking, secretly hoping that Rex's could come up with a plausible explanation for this. He had liked Fives. He did not want to discover that his friendship had been a lie.

"Fives wasn't in his right mind. He clearly under the effect of… _something_ " Rex continued, but it looked more like he was trying to convince himself rather that Anakin "You know him, sir. Would he ever side with a Sith against his brothers?"

"If you asked me that question yesterday the answer would be clear… but now?" He sighs. "I don't know Rex, you saw what he acted like." His foot catches on something hard as stone and he looks down. The strange object looked like melted metal. He crooks his head at it.

 _'Is that a blaster?'_ he thinks and barely has the thought registered before he realizes the truth of it. He shares a look with Rex then nods.

"Seems they had a discussion." Rex says like it proves something, Anakin does not let his doubt show but he remembers clearly what Fives had tried to do to earn the warrant on his capture. As a detective, he could not believe that Vader's attempt at Palpatine life _, that happened on the exact same day!_ , was a mere coincidence.

There were no coincidences.

"Orders, sir?"

"They are still on foot and won't have gotten far." He said with a certainty given by the force. "Set up patrols to lock down the area."

* * *

:::

It was a battle in itself for Luke not to look back. He knew that his father was there, not far behind him. It was so hard to convince himself to continue because the urge to turn around and try to make Anakin understand what was happening was almost overpowering.

But Anakin would not understand.

There was a heavy lock on the words that Luke needed to say to explain all of this and without them, Anakin would either think him a fool or a mad man…

He shook his head to himself and instead he followed this stranger this… _Fives_ … into the labyrinth of smaller alleys and pathways slim enough that if he had found himself in the wilds he would have called them part of a hunter's trail. They were certainly not used often given all the discarded things he had to sidestep.

He strode down the darkened alley, following close after his new and unexpected guide. Fives had made it clear that they should not stick around and wait for the search party that he knew _would_ be coming.

He didn't argue Fives point, because, despite his desperate wish to reason with Anakin in his heart he knew it was impossible, and he was not sure he could beat Anakin and his soldiers a second time. It was more luck than skill that had gotten him out of that situation the first time around.

At that thought he glanced briefly at Fives walking ahead of him. An ally that had been as unexpected as it had been welcome. He brushed a hand over his forehead and breathed in deeply.

This game had just gotten more complicated that he had thought previously. He had only come here to put an end to Sidious in the most direct way possible. But what was the point of killing Sidious, if someone else could just pick up whatever remote that controlled those chips and ordered the republic's entire army to kill the Jedi anyway?

If what he had just discovered had been done in the true past, then it was this order that killed off the entire Jedi order along with any hope the galaxy had for a peaceful future.

 _'Those chips… why had no one known before?'_ Luke thought. _'How can something so big just be hidden like that?'_ And how could the soldiers afterwards look themselves in the mirror knowing they had committed genocide. Killed their friends and allies in cold blood.

He rested his eyes a moment longer at Fives' tense back and then turned his attention behind them and the force he had spread out to watch out for the wolves at their heels.

He could not be angry with them, he realized. The clone troopers were as much the victims as the Jedi. He knew very well what it was like to carry the responsibility of having taken a life. It was not a burden he would wish on anyone.

Water splashed his boots when he passed a puddle he didn't try to step over. The boots were already ruined anyway. He cast a look at Fives that silently pointed down yet another dark alley. Apart from their steps, the silence was so thick that it felt like a physical pressure in the air.

Luke had not expected to find an even more forceless place than the alley he dragged the trooper into, but he found himself macabrely impressed with the state of this place.

He had seen more welcoming tombs.

He again tested the surface thoughts of Fives but found no deception. Still, it made Luke's skin crawl to trust someone other than himself especially given the circumstances. The chips were an event he had not foreseen.

Who knew how many knew the trigger to the chips, whatever it was, that made the troopers obey any command?

Even if he did manage to kill Sidious in time, would his father instead die by some cruel twist of fate in combat against another enemy? And even if he didn't then there was a great chance that the empire would come to exist anyway, just with another sitting on the throne.

…this was… a complication he did not need. He brushed his hand against the still aching arm, his finger brushed the black cloth. Back in his own time he had come to like the colour because it gave him anonymity when he needed it. But wouldn't it stick out like a sore thumb if he even got near the Jedi temple.

He might as well hold a sign over his head with the letters 'very suspicious person!' written on it.

He curled his fingers in the cloth, sapping the comfort it gave him and pulled the hood to cover his face more as they climbed another flight of stairs and a pair walked past them followed by a lone figure that ducked his head when Fives turned to look.

Luke pretended he hadn't seen them and kept his silence under the hood. He liked the security of anonymity it gave him, and it had also turned him from 'farm boy' into a Jedi in the eyes of others in his own time.

He scoffed at the memory of it and the boy he used to be. He had wanted so much to be… something… _anything_ in those days. To be somebody that people would listen to and when Obi-Wan came out of blue and told him that he was 'chosen' and meant for so much more. Luke did not hesitate for one moment.

He knew better now. As painful as it was to admit to himself… he should never have left Tatooine. There was nothing out in this galaxy that he needed to see.

He pulled at the hood again when it started to slide back and kept his fingers on the coarse wool a moment longer than needed. He was grateful for it and the anonymity it provided in these streets, even if it still made him cringe to see his own refection in the store windows after-.

 _'Store windows?-'_ He cut the thought off and stops. _'Where were they?'_

This was no rich area, but it was not poor either. Somewhere during Luke's thoughts, Fives had lead him out of the slums. Or beginning to at any rate. Fives had walked almost twenty steps before he noticed Luke had stopped.

"What?" Fives asked. He still felt genuine and honest through the force, but there was something nibbling at the edges. Something dark.

Luke retreated into his cloak, wrapping it tighter around him and eyeing the surroundings.

"Where are we going?" He asked. Before he had simply thought they had chosen any direction that lead 'away' as fast as possible. Now it seemed Fives had a destination in mind.

Luke straitened his spine at the same time his distrust curled in on itself inside him. It was an old and ugly little thing that twisted around itself, but it had served him well in the pasts years.

"I told you before. A safe place." Fives not-answered the question. "It is only a little further ahead-"

"No." If one could dig their heel into hard pavement, that was exactly what Luke would do.

"It is only a –"

"No." Luke let the word stand on its own.

Fives made a quick motion like he was chewing on the words he wanted to say then he closed the distance between them after a quick look on a small group of people that passed by. When Fives next spoke, his voice was lowered into a whisper. "What is the problem all of a sudden?"

"This is not the way to the senate." He decided to say honestly, he was never a good diplomat and any desire to pursue that path had died a violent death years ago.

"…The Senate? We are not going there right now. The security level would be as high as it can get after today. Going there now would be suicide." Fives says with clear irritation discolouring the careful blank mask that had hidden the intense disgust Luke had felt coming from him during the entire walk. "We need to get off the streets as soon as possible and lay low."

It sounded reasonable and Fives looked like he knew what he was talking about.

But Luke was too stubborn just to let it go and the distrust still ghosted at the forefront of his mind. He had trusted before and been punished for it more times than he cared to admit.

"Out of the question." He said and brushed Fives reasoning aside. "Nala Se would be a fool not to destroy the chips after she learns you escaped." Luke said and made a gesture that indicated the trooper. "I will not waste time by hiding like a coward."

"Look, I agreed to this because I thought we were better off together than alone." Fives said, he sounded like a commander Luke once knew. He was a man with a strict facade but it had turned out once Luke got to know him, that he had cared a lot more than he let on. The man had died in the field two days after Luke finally learned his first name.

Luke didn't really care much for first names after that.

"We don't help anyone but Palpatine by being caught easily." Fives tries to argue. "We will need disguises and security passes. I know where to get both" He stops searching for the words that might convince the Sith "Just… trust me on this, alright? I know what I am doing"

Fives sighed when Luke did not move an inch. "Let's try this then." He stepped closer right into Luke's personal space.

"What are you doing?" Luke said and couldn't keep his surprise out of his voice. He raises a hand on instinct to push Fives back but the Trooper resist Luke attempt. "Fives, what exactly are you-"

"The Jedi can feel if people lie. I guess you can do the same." Fives say and must have taken Luke's silence as confirmation because he nodded to himself. "Whatever our differences, I will work with you to save my brother's and I will not betray you to them or the Jedi." He said and added. "Even if you do deserve it, Sith."

"Am I lying?" Fives asked as he leaned forward and stared daringly right into Luke's eyes. The intensity of the stare made Luke feel uncomfortable.

"Ever heard of personal space?" Luke said and pushed the trooper away and this time backing it with a hint of the force. Fives steps back without resisting it, probably knowing that he could not best that. "…and I don't sense lies better just because you are standing this close." Luke continued without completely keeping the annoyance out of his voice.

"Am I lying?" Fives asked again but it sounded too demanding to be a question.

 _'Are you?'_ Luke thought. he could not feel any deception from Fives, only the almost overpowering devotion to his brothers but that did not mean it wasn't there. Strong emotions like devotion could sometimes drown the other emotions attached to it. _'I don't know.'_ He admitted to himself.

He never knew for sure.

He felt the pure intentions from Fives unstained by any doubt, but there was something else, the imprint of another emotion. It looked like hate. The old kind of hate that had to be nurtured over time to be this intense, and with the hate was the thing he didn't want to see.

Fives was lying.

 _'…this is not going to work.'_ Luke realizes even as he focuses on the weak ghost of anger he can barely trace over the intense devotion. But the anger is there and it is so dark it is almost pitch black. Luke knew alliances based on hatred had its uses and could be quite strong, but they never lasted long and Fives anger was not directed at Palpatine… it was directed at Luke.

"Where is this place then?" Luke asked and hiding his wariness behind an uncaring front.

"Not long from here." Fives adds as if he can feel Luke had seen through his facade. "It is safe."

 _'For who?'_ Luke thought, his agitation building.

Then a warning spikes in the force. Fives gasp when Luke robotic hand closes around his arm and drags Fives with him around a corner. Voices sound behind him in the same moment Luke's back hits the cool wall. The force presence was strong, not as strong as Anakin's, but contained and… loud.

"They came through here recently." A deep voice says at the same time that the sound of running steps stops. The steps are heavy and Luke does not have to look to know that it is soldiers. There is a strange light source in the dark street now. Luke can see a purple light that reflects off the white wall in front of him.

He leans forward, sneaking closer to the edge to catch a glimpse of his pursuers. A force stops him. He looks back to see Fives' hand locked around his arm. "No'" Fives whispers harshly, catches Luke's eyes and shakes his head. He motions down a narrow pathway that is so slim that it was completely hidden in the sparse light before Fives had pointed it out.

This was Luke's chance. He could get rid of Fives right now and try to do this on his own. Fives was a grenade waiting to go off, and the lie was glaring back at him in the force… but Luke didn't know this city and if there were more patrols like this one wandering the streets looking for him, there was a good chance he would get caught or killed.

Luke grimaced but he would have to take the risk and trust Fives this once. _'Then I will get rid of him as soon as I can.'_ he promised himself and hoped was making a fatal mistake. He clenched his hands into fists at his side in frustration.

"Come on!" Fives whisper with agitation. There is a rough pull at his arm."Before _he_ sees us."

 _'Damn it!'_ Luke thinks, pushes off the wall and slips down the alley with Fives following close behind. They had barely come out at the other side before Fives takes the lead again. He breaks into a run and Luke follows.

The run silently through the streets taking seemingly random turns down the many streets that were strangely devoid of people.

Luke has lost all sense of direction when they finally stop. aided by the force, Luke barely broke a sweat. Fives looks less rested. He was bent over, his hands resting heavily on his knees, breathing heavily.

"Who was that?" Luke asked. He recognized the strong presence from the Jedi that had arrived with Obi-Wan and Anakin when he possessed the civilian in front of the Jedi temple.

"G-General Mace…. Windu" Fives gasped "You do not want to… f-fight him."

"Really?" Luke replied with another question. He doubted the unknown Jedi would be any threat despite his impressive force presence. Only Anakin, Yoda and Obi-wan survived the war after all. The other Jedi had been too weak to survive. "What makes him so different from Skywalker?"

Luke had already beaten 'the chosen one' in this time. Aside for Obi-Wan and Yoda, Luke doubted he would meet much worthy resistance in battle.

Fives just sends him a long look and he breathed in heavily in and out. "Most… only fight Windu... once."

Luke didn't try to hide his disbelief. After fighting Vader in his own future, he doubted anything else compared to that horrifying experience.

"Couldn't you have…" Fives breathed in heavily once more and pushed his hands again his knees to get up. "Used the force to help me too?"

"Yes." Luke smiles, faking a surprised expression, like he only realized this. "I could have." He allows himself a grin vindictively at Fives offended expression until he turns his focus to the immediate surroundings.

His heart misses a beat

It was beautiful. It was a small square with a little spring in the middle with fresh water blinking in the moonlight and surrounding it in a circle… trees. He hadn't realized how much he had missed trees before now and a whisper of a sound escaped him. He caught Fives watching him out of the corner of his eyes, but the trooper did not comment on it.

Instead the footsteps were loud in the silence when the passed the long row of trees. Luke reached out secretly when the passed a tree and he let a fragile leaf brush his fingers with a delicate touch. He knew it was a morbid indulgence. Fragile things never lasted.

But the beauty of simple things never ceased to surprise him.

"Never seen a tree before?" Fives said with a mocking tone Luke did not care for.

"It's been awhile." Luke says letting go of both his anger and the gentle hold he had on the little green leaf but the shame of showing this weakness tasted nasty in his mouth. He almost ripped his hand away, but that would have emphasized the image that Fives was already forming in his mind

 _'Focus!'_ He berated himself, and made very sure to keep Fives within eyesight. He straightened his back. "What way from here?" He asked as a poor distraction, but Fives gestured to the right, down another alley and fell into step beside Luke as they left the small square behind.

Luke was silently surprised at the quiet here in the middle of a city that had so many millions of citizens. Even if it was so long since he left Tatooine, it was still hard to grasp the thought of so many people living in the same place.

Unbidden his eyes slid upwards and took in the sight of the many lights blinking back at him. There was the constant sound of vehicles crisscrossing the sky above, but it sounded very far away down here.

Still he marvelled at the silhouettes of them against the many lights that he knew were all artificial. Deep inside the sight brought back the old ache, the old homesickness, that had never really left.

It was in memory of the only thing he really missed about Tatooine now that aunt Beru and uncle Owen weren't there anymore. It was the same reason he knew he would never come to like this planet, he enjoyed watching the stars too much, and this planet didn't have any.

"Give me a moment." Fives says and stop by a door that looks like it has known better days, but unlike the others they passed on the street this one was the only one not made of wood. "We need to get through here. He kneels down and starts working on the lock.

Used to these kinds of jobs Luke turns and he faces the street so he can quickly get a clear view of both directions. But he had already stretched the force behind him and into the building. Staring ahead he focused all his attention on searching for danger in this 'safe house'. At first he found nothing.

He used more strength on this than he really had to spare on a second search, but he would not risk walking right into a trap. Still after a third intense search he found nothing. It seemed Fives didn't mean to betray him just yet. He kept his guard up regardless.

"Why do you fight for the republic?" Luke asked breaking the silence that was only disturbed but the sound of Fives quiet workings on the lock.

"I would like to think that all people deserve freedom." He snaps like Luke's question had been an accusation that is entirely too loud for Luke's liking and he throws a quick look down and up the street. "Unlike the Separatists." Fives continues behind him a little lower like he too though he had been too loud.

"The Separatist faction fight to free themselves from the tyranny of the republic." Luke said in reply it was part of what little information about the clone wars. There had been almost no information to be found about the clone wars aside from the position that Palpatine got out of it. "They are fighting for freedom too, but apparently another…version than yours?"

Fives scoffs but does not answer the question. A word that sounds like a curse of some kind escapes him and Luke can hear him shift around.

"Got it." Fives says roughly as he stands back up. He avoided looking at Luke and he was trying very hard to suppress a heavy emotion Luke couldn't identify. The door opens with a light push from Fives. He stepped over the threshold without further ceremony.

Luke rubbed his arm from where the scars still stung painfully and moved to follow. The heavy door slid back close with a heavy hollow sound and Fives gave it an extra push for good measure.

"Is this the place?" Luke asked. He narrowed his eyes but he could not make anything out in the dark that descended after the door blocked the light of the moon outside. It made him instantly tense.

His answer is a soft click when Fives flips a switch and a small light ignites in a lamp in the celling. A trail of small lamps lights up one by one above him until the room is bathed in a clear but faded light that leaves the dark corners still covered in shadows.

But the place was empty, the force reassured him of that.

"Cosy." Luke says in a dry comment. It looked like a smaller version of the warehouse they just left. It seemed Fives had a preference for the places he used as hideouts.

"It looks worse than it is." Fives says sounding a little defensive. "It will a good place to lay low while things calm down."

Luke spots a chair and he cannot remove his eyes from it now that he has seen it. He resisted the urge. _'Don't show any more weakness.'_ He thinks to himself refuses to surrender to the fatigue, and sit down. "Won't somebody come eventually?" He asked to distract himself and tries to look relaxed when Fives throw him a searching look.

"Not for a while." Fives said and looks down the shelves as if he was searching for something. He moves in between the rows and opens a box. "This is one of the old warehouses. They are in the process of being shut down."

 _'Convenient.'_ Luke thinks, but keeps the thought to himself. "And how do you know about this?" he asked and drops his head down in his hands to close his eyes for a moment. By the force he was exhausted, but before Fives looks back up Luke pulls himself together and forces himself to stand up straight.

"How do you know?" Luke repeated. It seemed a little out of the usual that a soldier would know about a place like this.

"I know many things." Fives says with an uneven smile. "Like I know that we won't get anywhere dressed as we are now." He digs through the crate and pulls something out. "Catch!"

"What is-" Luke looks down at the thing he just caught out of reflex.

"Disguises" Fives says with entirely too much spirit for Luke's taste.

* * *

:::

Vader does not look excited at the disguise. In fact, he couldn't look less enthusiastic about it if he tried. He looked down at the pile as if it was something nasty he just found under his shoe.

Fives suppresses a grin. Vader would be even more disgruntled when he found out what it was Fives had picked out for him.

"I told you I would find us disguises." And adds a little more gleefully than he really has to. "Sorry, the dark and broody robe has to go. It is not really your colour anyway." Vader just narrows his

eyes to that remark as his free hand dug its finger into the dark cloth.

Fives sighs inwardly, missing his brothers. Vader didn't have any humour at all.

 _'It is just for now.'_ Fives reminded himself, until he got the proof he need to convince General Skywalker. The Sith was probably already thinking of a way to get rid of Fives. The Sith had a long tradition for treachery.

Vader looked at the cloth again and released a heavy breath before he turned on his heel and walked away behind some of the higher rows of shelves. "No looking!" He says loudly before he slips out of sight.

Fives scoffs and goes to put on his own disguise. _'Cheeky bastard'_ Fives thought "Don't flatter yourself" He mumbled. He shook his head, took his own disguise and moved a little away from the door but didn't hide behind one of the racks like Vader had.

He didn't have the same modesty the Sith had. In the army such silly things as bashfulness never lasted long, Fives reflected as he started putting on the uniform of the local security guard

It was the uniform of the security personnel of the entire senate district. It was a rare find that he had been more than a little lucky to get his hands on here. He had also found the uniform of the service personnel in the senate that he had folded neatly on the shelf, but he couldn't use it just yet. There was somewhere else they would need to go first.

He began putting the uniform on quickly, but he had barely managed to get the pants on and started reached out for the jacket, that was still folded on the box, when he heard footsteps behind him.

"I take this is funny to you?" The voice was calm but when Fives turned to face him he was startled by the anger. Vader posture was calm, but he had never looked this furious, not even when he had faced General Skywalker.

Apparently Vader didn't like the Jedi robe Fives had given him.

Fives barely suppressed a smile.

"It is just a disguise." Fives says, but he doesn't hide his inner glee at putting the Sith in that particular uniform, because Vader looks practically enraged. "Come off it. Everyone with even the smallest connection to the force would be able to recognize that you are a force-user. If your wear anything else, you will only attract unwanted attention."

"Hah!" Vader responds mockingly. "As if a force blind would notice-"

" _I_ noticed right away." Fives countered. "It is in the way you act and talk, like you are aware of everything around you… it is hard to explain but very easy to see once you know what you are looking for." He said and then added to cement his point. "And now I am not even counting the Jedi, who **will** notice no matter how much you try to hide it."

"I refuse to wear this." Vader stated finally and stared briefly at the cloak in his hand as if it was a venomous snake, but there is something in his eyes that looked like horror. "They will know I am not one of them." Vader says with utter conviction. He pauses and looks at Fives in a certain way that makes him pause as well.

"They won't know." Fives says slowly as he tries and fail to recognize the odd look in Vader's eyes.

"There are many Jedi here, and not all of them know each other. This place has the largest concentration of Jedi in the entire galaxy. You will blend right in." He says calmly, beating down the rising frustration on the inside.

"This will fail." Vader says and after a breath he reveals with a reluctant expression. "This is not the first time I have been hunted. I have more experience in this than you do."

"From this side of the chase perhaps." Fives agrees. "But I know what tactics they will use to try and trap us, because I have been trained in using those same tactics too." He says and gives a little more ground now that the edge had gone out of Vader's eyes.

It is Vader's frustration talking right now, Fives knows this through his own experience and training. Vader had worn himself thin and was not really being rational because of the exhaustion he was trying very hard not to show.

"No one would ever believe that you, a Sith, would disguise yourself as a Jedi." Fives reasons.

Vader just stare back at him, the fire from before had gone out. Suddenly Fives regretted doing this. He cannot explain Vader's reaction to this, but there is clearly more to it than what Vader says.

Why else would he suddenly look so defeated?

"You overestimate my capabilities in this… This _disguise_ of yours will only work as long as I do not speak." Vader admitted and the blank expression fought its way back into place on his face. "I know nothing of the Jedi. As soon as I open my mouth they will know."

"Well you must know something." Fives argues having seen the proof of that with his own eyes. "You couldn't have battled General Skywalker like that if you didn't." It was the truth. Very few could fight General Skywalker like Vader had.

"That was… a battle, **that** I know..." Vader stops and looks out into the dark like the words he was searching for were out there. "But their traditions? Customs?" Vader made a helpless gesture. "Before I came here I didn't even know what a Padawan was."

That takes Fives by surprise.

"How could you not know that?" Fives says, trying and failing to hide is astonishment. "Surely you must have at least heard of basics like that."

"I tried." Vader said with a shrug "But there wasn't really much left to find after the purge that Darth Sidi-"

Vader flinched back like he was struck. He grabbed his arm in a painful soundless gasp and stumbled back and up against the tall rack. The impact sent boxes crashing to the ground along with Vader when he collapsed up against it and hit the ground hard.

Then Vader was screaming.

"Vader!" Fives rushed to him his eyes darted around, but he could see no attacker. He kneeled down, he pulled at Vader trying to turn him around see what was causing this. "What is happening!"

But there was no response from Vader. He was twisting on the ground, completely incoherent. He clawed at his left arm and he wouldn't stop screaming. Vader resisted Fives' frantic pull at him, his eyes were wide open, but he didn't seem to register Fives at all and his whole body was shaking.

Fives could see Vader was trying to stop screaming. He bit at his arm to strangle the sound, but the sound only muted for a second until another rough spasm tore through him and the strangled scream ripped his clenched teeth apart.

 _'What do I do!'_ Fives thought desperately, searching for some injury that could explain this.

Anything!

"Vader! Tell me what is happening!" Fives practically yelled in frustration and helplessness. The screams were horrible to listen to and Vader face was torn in intense pain. But there was no visible wound, no injury that explained this extreme reaction. Nothing.

 _'What do I_ _ **do**_ _!_ ' Fives thought with horror. He was panicking. He knew he was panicking, but he couldn't help it in the face of this unexpected attack.

Then suddenly Vader stopped. He stopped screaming, moving… stopped everything, and his hand that had clawed at so desperately at his arm wilted limply to the floor.

The room was silent

Vader did not move again.

* * *

:::

"Skywalker?" Mace Windu stops to look back at Anakin who stood frozen on the spot halfway through a step.

"Sorry I just…" Anakin looked out over the city and the unnerving feeling he had felt for a fraction of second was gone. "… for a moment there I thought I felt something."

* * *

:::

It took hours before Vader woke back up.

Fives suppressed a relieved sigh when the cloak he had draped over the Sith started sliding off when Vader finally moved. A look of utter confusion stared back at him when Vader opened his eyes. He blinked at Fives with an open expression that made him seem very young. Then the constant frown was back and the look in his eyes darkened.

"You okay now?" Fives asked, not moving from beside the pallet he had placed Vader on.

"Yes… It has passed." Vader said, but the words sounded like a lie. Fives let the lie escape unquestioned between them, reasoning that in Vader's position he would have lied too. Vader shifted a little under the robe, trying to sit up and failing.

"What was that?" Fives asked and reached out a hand. Vader eyed it silently until he, after a breath, accepted the hand. Vader fingers felt colder than the air around them when Fives pulled him up to a sitting position.

"An old injury." Vader explained shortly "It acts up now and again." He leans forward and rest his arms on his legs. It was not really an answer, and Fives did not want to think about what could cause an injury that reacted so violently.

"Who did that to you?"

Vader does not answer. He blinks silently up out in the dark, his expression blank and carved out of stone. Fives waits long enough for the seconds to become minutes, and still no answer comes from the Sith.

"Did you kill him?" Fives ask and there is a sudden anger in his own voice that he does not understand. Vader still doesn't answer, but slowly, like the act took momentous effort, Vader turned his head towards him.

"Are you actually worried about me?" Vader asked with a smile that Fives thinks was meant to look cheeky, but with the exhausted line around his eyes it appears tired instead.

 _'So that is a_ _ **'no'**_ _then?'_ Fives thought. A Sith would generally boast about such things in his experience so the person that had done it was probably still around. "Don't get too used to it." He said instead of questioning Vader about his old enemy. He probably wouldn't get a straight answer anyway.

"Why did the robe bother you so much?"

"I am not a Jedi." Vader replied with narrowed eyes and a slight frown, but there was some other feeling attached to it, only Fives couldn't identify it. "You keep telling me that, but why does that matter so much to-" Fives stops himself there. Something inside him doesn't want to know the answer to that question.

It is better to keep things the way they are.

"Look…" Fives says after a moment of hesitation. When Vader had said that earlier, about the Jedi would know immediately that Vader was not a Jedi, he had not looked angry, he had looked… hurt. "If you really hate the robe that much we can find something different."

 _'You are too soft Fives.'_ Fives berated himself, trying to recall that a few hours earlier he had every intention of turning on Vader the first chance he got, but he never was really good at seeing people in pain, no matter who they were.

"No, you are right, it is the best choice." Vader seems to draw some power from his own words. He drags the robe that Fives had draped over him like a blanket over his shoulders as he sits up straighter with difficulty. He puts the robe on quickly, a little too quickly for it to look uncaring, but Fives supposed if one of the Jedi had to disguise themselves as Sith he would see the same reaction.

"So, how do I look?" Vader asked. He gently brushed a wrinkle out of the clothing and looks up at Fives. There was something about that image, Vader in a Jedi robe, that struck some cord within Fives. It was like he had seen it before today.

"Do I pass?" Vader says that with a smile that was clearly crooked and forced but there was something in his eyes that looked… hopeful?

" **You** , pass for a Jedi?" Fives said with a huff and looked away suddenly uncomfortable.

"In your dreams."

* * *

:::

 **To be continued**

* * *

Author's note:

An enormous thanks to Shinigami Merchant for take the time to beta this chapter! :)

And thank you all so much for the incredible response :) I was overwhelmed by all your kind reviews, I cannot say how much it means to me that you enjoy the story and take the time to send me such nice words :) You can count on me to work even harder to complete this story.


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